Nightlights

There are just some times when I don't feel like writing, but it isn't like writer's block. I find these times the worst, because I have stories, I have places I want to take those stories and ideas for new ones, but anytime I open up a word processor with the intent to write(and the laughable exception of opening up my blog page was) I can't write. I'm choking now, all the time, and I can figure out why. Maybe it's because I'm tired, or hungry, maybe it's because I'm stressing about finding a new job and hoping that my phone's battery hangs on just long enough so that I can upgrade it next month, maybe it's because a certain special girl and I have been locking horns lately. I don't know what it is, but I just can't focus. I'm at the point again where I'm not sleeping. Not that I can't sleep, because I can, but I don't want to sleep. It feels like a waste again, and I thought that I was past that.

When I was little, laying in bed fending off sleep was what I did. I would lay awake and think up new things every night, alone in the gloom, because I don't like nightlights. I've never been able to stomach them. Not as a child, not as an adult, and there's some inherent logic in the back of my mind that I would rather live in the dark with the creatures than turn on the lights and let them know I'm there. I've always been like this, afraid to turn on lights, afraid to illuminate myself and face the darkness, because, like anybody that has had access to a computer at any time of the night and has read something even remotely frightening, you get the eerie feeling that something is behind you. Even when you know, logically, there can't be anything behind you, one is afraid to turn around.

I'm assuming that I feel like that. The light represents all of the things I'm afraid of. My backlit body is a shining beacon in the darkness, a single, flashing red blinker on a road without street lamps. The darkness, though I've dwelt there most of my life, sees the change and unleashes its terrors to consume me. I've always felt the light would be my betrayer. It represents a small circle of vulnerability, a little glowing circle of self-awareness in a roving sea of dark. When you've known that darkness, which for me is writing and the inside of my own imagination since I was young enough to form words and ideas, the darkness is your home.

All I've done is push it's boundaries, learned its forests and bodies of water. I can write short responses in character, I can write a few paragraphs in character. I've learned to write pages in character and in other characters. The characters can interact now in a believable way, held together by prose that I've practiced and edited and pulled apart before stitching it back together with the curved needle and coarse string I've seen in survival movies.

The dark has expanded to encompass different things, different worlds, old times, new times, but the light is still there. The light is success and it is failure. It's a thing of beauty and also a horrible, ugly, twisted thing. The light is selling on ebook for three dollars, and it's also somebody not liking what you wrote and returning it. It's also somebody getting a free read and giving it back, making you happy for a few hours and then snatching back what they've paid to read what you wrote without leaving either praise or scathing hatred. I am afraid of the light because both success and failure live there, and once I let it into the sanctuary of worlds that I've kept sheathed in dark, everything but the farthest corners will be illuminated and looked upon for what they are.

I'm just hoping that the lack of light so far hasn't led me to create horrid, misshapen things. I can only hope.

Branching Out and Staking My Claim

For some reason I feel like today is Friday. But it's not. I've been rearranging blogs and twitters and tumblrs for going on two days, and I feel like the week is over, that I'm rolling into the weekend and that I'm super behind. It's been 5 days since I've published another ebook and I think that I'm just getting antsy. I want to earn money, and I want to be successful, but I'm pretty sure, not 100%, but like 99, that we all hope to be successful and never want to worry about money during our lives.

During the middle of February I decided that it was time to follow my hopes and dreams, follow my heart, and any other euphemism that involves flying to the moon by the seat of your pants whilst abandoning the rest of the left-brainers. I decided to get published or do it myself, to make my own empire. I stepped into the arena of self-publishing, mind you, into the arena of erotic literature(which I'm keeping off of this blog), and I've sold more in my first week than a lot of others reported. Which I assume means I'm doing something right. So if I can move erotica and erotic romance, who says that I can't do everything I've wanted to do for the past 8 years?

I've already done it with something I thought was a joke.

In 2012, I've become an author. I've written the first full issue of a supernatural fiction webcomic. I've written the beginning of an intriguing, possibly grimdark science fiction novel.

In 2012, I plan to do the following: Solidify my idea for a webcomic and get started on it. Publish short stories under yet another pen name. Get back to drawing and start doing cheap commissions. Partner up, and do as many business related things as possible. Pay back a good friend who loaned me some cash.

"i feel like something is missing, but i don’t know what :T"

I've already partnered up with one person. Freja(the artist behind the image), a good friend of mine, is the artist of the forthcoming webcomic. My girlfriend is running her own blog, and currently helps keep me on track with story ideas and is a great reader for coherence. Hopefully, things will continue to move forward.

I almost hate status quo now. I lost a friend to his constant need for things to always be calm. For me, that's defeat. Life isn't supposed to be about status quo, because sitting and waiting for things to happen, to be settled down at 24, is for chumps. Everything needs to constantly evolve to stay fresh, and I for one, plan on being in on that.

And Then There Was Horror

Which is why I'm branching out. I write what I know and what I love, to emulate a little piece of my own fantasy based on the things that I've already seen, and the things that I wish were down on paper for everyone else to see. The genres I've dabbled in are supernatural fiction, urban fantasy, science fiction, both low and high fantasy, erotica, and a small bit of romance in my high school days.

The one thing that I've never written is horror. I watch horror movies, and the cornier, the better, but also, the more gruesome and eye-gougingly horrific, the better. I love horror premises, that somebody decides to go above and beyond the call of duty to make something miraculous happen only for it to backfire; humans meddling in affairs that don't concern them, animals becoming the rightful masters of the world through gruesome carnage instilled in them through blind rage, inky black blobs that destroy their prey in truly gruesome ways while they're being consumed.

At first I wanted Adelle's story to be one smashing a detective story together with urban fantasy, but now? The story will have the initial setup of a bleak, almost empty town that a detective story would feel at home in, but along will come Adelle, and down will come the world. My initial plan for the novel was to have my little siren play some sort of side role or be heavily involved in the plot twist. This time, I want her to be the plot twist.

Then there's the fact that I want to write some scary, gory prose that people think should be condemned.

But branching out, in the long run, will be more of an experience for me, even though I write fairly often now. So when you see me reading King short stories or Lovecraft, be wary of what you read from me.

I'm available on Tumblr @ TheWandererXain, my professional writing and art tumblr and Kinetijitsu, my personal tumblr.

Follow me on Twitter @ thewandererxain.

A Sample of my Heretofore Unnamed Sci-Fi Novel

Cyle tried not to see what he was seeing, he tried to reject that it was happening around him. All he let himself do was direct his men to flank the beasts, direct them to fire and use as much force was necessary to bring the humongous black masses down. He couldn’t control his breathing, but it shot through his nose and mouth hard, fast, and hot. His hands were shaking, his grip on the blast pistol tight and straight. His finger was pulling the trigger, leveling the pistol and readjusting for recoil.

It wasn’t going down fast enough, and the two behind it charged through the line, scattering the soldiers. One man was unfortunate enough to have his leg snapped under the beast’s weight as it ran through the Seventh and Eighth regiments. His howl of pain wasn’t as brutal, wasn’t as savage as the beast looming over him. In a flash of movement, its jaws had clamped down, removing another man’s head. His neck sprayed blood as his heart beat its last, and the eyeless thing turned to stare them down.

Tylic moved first. He stepped away from them, shouting some kind of obscenity that Cyle was blocking from his mind. The females stood to the right, away from him, and Ferodin crouched next to the darker man, blast rifle raised but quiet.

It moved. The eyeless, black thing leapt at them with its jaws gnashing the broken bones of its enemies. The blood drool hung from its open maw as it roared at them, so close that Cyle could feel the fine, bloody saliva mist and rotten breath upon him. Superheated blast slugs sunk into its flesh and when the thing’s long, armored tail swung at them, Arourin tumbled over.

As soon as the Primus could spare a glance to look at her, the creature’s head exploded. Tylic dropped the detonator pin of his thrown blast charge, offering Ferodin his fist in a friendly exchange. Septimus slapped him on the back, and Arourin smiled. Revy pointed into the crowd. There were still the other two to deal with, and after them, the lowborn.

“I’m fresh out of charges, sir.” Cyle’s hearing slammed back into his head with a bang that confused him. He looked at the men around him, motioned them to him with a swing of his head. They pulled back and took cover behind a barricade that the Eighth had been occupying before everything had gone to shit.

“Tell me that you all saw something I didn’t.” Cyle pointed at Tylic, and then looked at each of them individually.