Sneak-peeks at upcoming works...
Ask any author about their experiences as a writer and how they feel about their life as a writer and it won’t take long for them to get around to talking about “editing.” No thoughtful, self-aware writer labors under the misapprehension that their writing is all that great, straight out of the box. In fact if they’re honest with you, you’re likely to get something like the famous Hemingway quote:
“The first draft of anything is shit.”
Forced to read my own first drafts, I can wholeheartedly confirm it’s true…at least where I’m concerned. The real difference between a writer and an author, is the latter knows exactly what Hemingway meant from the painful, personal experience of reading their own work a week or two after writing it. Every author develops his/her own coping skills with the most necessary of admonitions to humility, but all of us (I think) know what he means.
That’s why we engage editors, “beta” readers and read what we think are final drafts out loud at least twice to see if it sounds as good as our hopeful eyes thought it was before we read it out loud the first time. (The editing usually begins again, shortly thereafter).
About now, the reader who got here thinking they were going to hear about my upcoming works is scratching his or her head, wondering when I’m going to cut to the chase. That would be now. My point with this self-indulgent editorial is to alert you to the painful truth about projected release dates. They’re always well…SOFT!
Stories are ready when they’re ready. So with that little tidbit in hand, please do feel free to click through to excerpts that appear below this introduction. And be assured, I will never release a title before I think it’s ready. Not that my judgement is infallible…it isn’t. But hopefully, I’ll never forget that art and truth are elusive at best…and worth trying to get right.