Jared Sandman

Season’s greetings and happy holidays.  I’m running a special for the next couple of weeks here on the site.  Last night was the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year.  It’s also the traditional kick-off of the yuletide, the twelve nights of Christmas.  Because that particular period of time factors so importantly in my novel The Wild Hunt, I thought this would be the perfect time to put that book on sale.

Drop by The Shop and you’ll find my second novel discounted by forty percent.  Pick up a signed copy for only nine bucks, or any of my other books as well.  I’ll run this special through Friday, January 6th, the end of the yuletide (also known as Epiphany). 

I’m putting my e-books on sale for the holidays as well.  Within the next day or two new prices for all my work will be reflected on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.  Download Dreamland for a mere $ .99, The Wild Hunt for $1.99 or both The Shadow Wolves and Leviathan for $2.99 each.  That’s a 25-75 percent discount off already low prices.

In other news I’m still working hard on the rough draft of my sixth novel.  Battled a head cold earlier this month that slowed me down a few days (hence the lag in blogging), but I sprang back better than ever.  I have another hundred-ish pages to go on this manuscript, so I expect to have some exciting news for you next month.

I first read Scott Nicholson’s Creative Spirit when Kensington published it as The Manor several years back.  Scott just republished it as an ebook, and next year he’ll be releasing a print version.  It’s on sale now and only $2.99.

Yesterday wrapped up National Novel Writing Month.  The goal is to pound out the rough draft of a fifty-thousand-word novel in thirty days.  Anything to get people to write or think creatively is an epic win in my book.  Congratulations to everyone who toughed it out and made it through to the finish line. 

I don’t know how many authors embark on the journey versus the number who actually finish, but I’d guess around two to one.  And that’s probably being a bit generous.  While it’s important to start a new project, it’s far more so to see it through to the end.  I’m sure many of those half-finished novels will be taken up again at some point (maybe even for next year’s NaNoWriMo).  I’ve never personally joined in the festivities, because I believe writers shouldn’t need encouragement to write.

If NaNoWriMo is the literary equivalent of a mad dash, I much prefer a leisurely (but diligent) pace.  Slow and steady wins the race, at least for me.  When I’m working on a project I’ll write four pages per day, five or six if the story’s going smoothly, in addition to editing and correcting another six to eight.  Within three to four months I’ll have an edited draft of a new book.

Of course some authors can go faster.  I know some who claim to churn out upwards of five to ten thousand words in a day.  I’m a bit dubious of such claims; that’s not writing so much as typing.  While I don’t think those folks are lying, I have to wonder how many of those forty pages are worth keeping.  The trade-off for such a slap-dash rough draft is that one is forced to write multiple drafts.  By going faster they’re actually causing more work for themselves in the long run.

While I don’t write that much each day, I do write every day when I’m committed to a project.  That’s a vital distinction many beginning writers have difficulty grasping.  One cannot wait for one’s Muse to arrive.  One must tempt her out by showing up to work and being prepared.  And even if she never shows, a writer needs the confidence to know he or she can produce decent work anyway. 

When I’m coming toward the close of a book I tend to write more each day, maybe eight to ten pages, as I’m swept away in the current of the book’s impending climax.  Over the years I’ve discovered that although I may be able to write more in a twenty-four-hour period, anything beyond about 2,500 words is rewritable junk.  My creative well runs dry at the ten-page mark.

So while I may not have written fifty thousand words last month, I did manage to produce a clean 30,000+, as I did the month before and likely will this month as well.  And if you prefer screenplays to novels, check out Script Frenzy in April.  It’s run by the same folks who do NaNoWriMo, and I may be tempted to participate in that next spring.

It’s been three weeks since I last posted.  Sorry ’bout that.  I’ve been hard at work on this new novel, the halfway point of which I should pass some time next week.  In the coming weeks I’ll have some info about the book to share.

In the meantime here’s some interesting items to peruse:

— November is National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo).  By my calculations, participants should be about one hundred and thirty pages into their new projects by now.  At the end of the month I’ll post my thoughts about NaNoWriMo, mainly why I’ve never taken part in it.

— Writer Brian Keene recently put up the transcript of his keynote speech from this year’s AnthoCon.  It amounts to advice about reading more, which you shouldn’t need cajoling to do anyway.  Plus a shout out to my favorite author, Robert Bloch.

Here’s a couple choice photos of Bob, along with many others, courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society.  I mean, wherever did he get the idea for Norman Bates?

— And make sure to tune in to The Simpsons tonight (yes, it’s still on the air) to catch Neil Gaiman voicing himself in the episode.

Author Neil Gaiman is trying to start a new Halloween tradition called All Hallows’ Read.  I think giving away books for trick-or-treat is a bit cost prohibitive, but there are plenty of great short stories that work just as well.  The foundation of the horror genre is built on the short story, after all.  So I’ll post a few of my favorites for this merry, scary night.  Enjoy.

The Masque of the Red Death — Edgar Allan Poe

The Damned Thing — Ambrose Bierce

The Judge’s House — Bram Stoker

One of my most memorable Halloween moments occurred when I was in fifth grade, so I would’ve been nine years old.  The teacher assigned us to write a scary story for the upcoming holiday.  She had but one rule:  no blood.  None of the stories could be bloody.  I argued with her at length about that proviso, but she remained inflexible . . . which only meant I had to get creative to circumvent it.

She gave us a week to come up with our stories.  The Friday before Halloween we all read them aloud to the class.  The kids pushed their desks against the walls then everyone sat cross-legged on the floor in a semicircle, and in the middle was a stool for the various guest readers.  The teacher closed the thick plastic curtains and shut off the lights to bathe us in darkness.

Each student took turns reading his or her story in front of the others, even using a flashlight under the chin for appropriate atmosphere.  Finally it was my opportunity to sit on the stool.  The tale I wrote was meant to be a sequel to Stephen King’s It.  I don’t know why I made that choice, considering I’d neither read the book nor seen the movie by that point.  All I knew of the novel was that it involved an evil clown, and clowns gave me the creeps.

I kept a few of the stories I wrote from my elementary schooldays:  one a fantasy about leprechauns, another about a time-traveling scientist.  But this particular piece has been lost to the ages, and I must admit that stings a bit.  Fortunately I remember it vividly, so at least it hasn’t been entirely forgotten.  The gist was thus:

A kid comes home from school one afternoon to find the house empty, so he watches some TV to pass the time.  He turns on a scary movie — Stephen King’s It — and falls asleep on the couch.  A violent thunderstorm passes by, during which an errant lightning bolt strikes the home’s TV antenna.  The lightning magically activates the television, allowing the film’s killer clown to invade our world.

The clown kidnaps the boy and drags him into the TV set.  Now trapped inside the television, the boy’s stranded deep within a complex labyrinth.  He tries to uncover an escape route, hitting one dead end after another.  And all the while he hears the clown taunting him, threatening his life.  The jester’s sing-song voice grows in strength as he moves effortlessly through the maze toward the boy.

After a time the kid discovers an exit.  He spies a window through which he’s able to view his living room.  The only problem is that the portal’s above a wall and out of reach.  The boy jumps up and gains a tenuous hold atop the wall.  As he starts to pull himself up, the clown appears and seizes his foot to drag him back into the darkness.

At that point the kid grabs his trusty pocketknife, the one his grandfather had given him for his tenth birthday (*).  He takes the knife and amputates the clown’s arm with a single slash (**).  The clown screams in agony, his gaping wound spurting green pus (***).

After that the boy pulls himself back through the television and into the real world.  The one-armed clown pursues him, trailing halfway through the TV set when the boy grabs a basketball and smashes the glass screen with it.  The clown is defeated, reality restored.  THE END (****).

About halfway through reading the story, I recall looking up from my handwritten pages.  In that moment every person in the room was focused on my tale, a fictional world I had conjured from nothing but my imagination.  Two dozen people, including the teacher, hanging on my every word to find out what happened next.  That instant was frozen in my mind, seared like an after-image in my retinas.  

That day I learned there was power in telling stories; more than that, there was magic.  I don’t want to oversell that point because it sounds too bohemian for my tastes.  But there is a certain level of truth in the matter, as any writer will tell you.  Some stories effectively tell themselves, become greater than the sum of their parts.  It’s rare when it happens, which makes it all the more special.

In retrospect that was a pivotal moment that helped point me in the direction of writing, even though I hadn’t been aware of it at the time.  Let me add Happy Halloween; have a safe evening trick-or-treating.  Don’t let any bogies snatch you away, and remember not all monsters wear masks.

____________________

*  A line verbatim I still remember vividly from the original story.

** Because that’s how it would happen in real life, my nine-year-old self figured.  No muscle or sinew, bone or cartiledge to worry about, just instant amputation.

***  Not blood, I pointed out to the teacher, gangrenous pus.  I was so proud.

****  Once my classmates had a chance to share their stories, everybody voted on whose was their favorite, the scariest.  Guess who won that year?

Two signings of note coming up.  On Saturday (October 22) I’ll be at the Regency Park Library for their annual author fair.  Stop by between 1 PM – 3PM to say hi or pick up any of my novels.  The address is 9701 Little Road in Port Richey.

And a reminder that I’ll be the October author guest at the Progress Energy art gallery in New Port Richey.  That’s tomorrow the 21st at 6:30 PM.  Address is 6231 Grand Blvd in NPR; parking is across the street.  I’ll be reading a selection from my latest novel, The Shadow Wolves, and answering any questions about writing, publishing or horror in general.

Hope to see you this weekend.

Today I reached one million words for my writing, a goal thirteen years in the making.  In truth, I likely surpassed that millionth word some months ago, between blog posts, message boards, emails, school assignments and so forth.  But in terms of my fiction output — short stories, novels, screenplays and the like — I’ve had to draw a line somewhere.  Based on my most accurate estimates, I crossed that milestone this afternoon.

Now that number doesn’t mean anything to you; realistically, it doesn’t matter much to me either.  It’s just that one million words was a long-term goal I had set for myself when I first began to write.  It’s a nice round number for starters, so many zeroes, more of a psychological signpost than anything else.

Furthermore, I had read Ray Bradbury’s sage advice (from Zen in the Art of Writing, I believe) that all writers have a million bad words in them.  I understood that by the point I reached that lofty amount, even Bradbury, one of my favorite authors, would be forced to consider me a “real” writer by his own definition.  Sounds needy and insecure, right?  Hey, I was thirteen at the time.

Over the years I’ve come to disagree with his numbers, though his original sentiment remains valid.  All writers must flush the dreck out of their systems before they can mine the best storytelling material.  I personally think one million words is too much.  That translates to roughly four thousand pages, eight reams of paper, the equivalent of ten novels.  The way I see it:  if you don’t know what you’re doing by your eleventh book, you haven’t paid close enough attention.

I believe each author has his or her individual substitute for the Bradbury Benchmark.  For many people it’ll be less than one million; for some lost souls it may be more.  Looking back on my own bibliography, I’d say there’s a good (or bad) 350,000 words’ worth of stories, novellas and scripts that are utterly forgettable.  Juvenilia from my earliest days in the trenches, when I was learning the mechanics of storytelling, from syntax and plotting to shaping words into pictures and balancing all the story elements together like pieces in an engine block.  

Those first 350,000 words were the most important in my nascent writing apprenticeship, accounting for the first six years of work.  That includes several published short stories and pieces that won me writing awards, not to mention an unpublished novel.  Hence my first million, at least in Bradbury’s sense, was closer to one-third of that actual amount.  After that I started producing tales that were uniquely mine, stories only I could tell because they spoke to issues that resonated within myself.

So tonight I shall celebrate in my own small way, by continuing work on my sixth novel.  Here’s to the next million words . . .

In honor of Halloween’s impending approach and my October anniversary, this month I dropped the prices on my e-books.  They’re all $2.99 through the end of the month, whereas they’re usually $3.99.  I try to keep my prices affordable throughout the year, always less than five bucks a pop.

I caught up on the Doctor Who finale over the weekend.  My guess that the Doctor was the impossible astronaut turned out to be wrong.  I felt the ending was a bit of a cheat, but still very good.  Good television keeps you guessing.  I hate shows like Terra Nova, where you can see every plot twist coming because the producers don’t take any storytelling risks.

This month marks thirteen years since I began writing, October of 1998.  I had scribbled a few stories before that time, always for school assignments (including a memorable Halloween one I’ll blog about later this month).  But 1998 is when storytelling went from something for which I had a knack to a private hobby, then eventually something I got paid to do.

I wrote diligently for eighteen months before composing a story I was willing to let someone else see, something I felt was worth submitting to magazine editors.  Although that particular tale never got published (a flash fiction piece, as I recall), I kept at it and pounded out story after story.  Six months later I sold my first published piece to a horror anthology for professional rates.  I was a fifteen-year-old freshman in high school.  See, persistence does pay off.

To help celebrate this lucky thirteenth anniversary, I’ll be doing some special stuff throughout the month; I’m not ready to announce it all at the moment (probably next week).  In addition I have another major milestone coming up this month, my first million words.  Based upon my calculations, I’m not far from my millionth word.  The number doesn’t mean much in reality, but it’s an important psychological barrier for me.  I’ll speak to that later in the month too.  So stick around and help me count down to one million.

Between the countdown, the sales specials and Halloween itself, October’s gonna be a busy month.  And to top off everything, today I began my next book project.  All I’ll say for now is that it’s a horror novel.  More info forthcoming, once I have a large chunk of the book behind me.