About the author
I retired during The Pandemic with the intention of focusing on becoming a writer, a second career after spending thirty years as a software developer. After a couple of short novels to knock the rust off my skills, I was ready to write a full-length novel. Fortunately, I have a long backlog of ideas, but the one that hit me out of the blue was "Fat Camp for Vampires", and at first, it was just a title, just an absurd thought that popped into my mind - but it hit me so hard that I couldn't stop thinking about it. Eventually, it became the first novel in a series (currently in progress) that will be at least three (with a short-story kicker and options for more stories down the road).
But I don't only write vampire stories. Or just fantasy. Or just speculative fiction. Thus, Mr. Nobody is on my list of stories to write. Part heist, part thriller, Mr. Nobody will be a change of pace after The Vampire Rules series.
And there's more to come after that: superheroes, tech-dystopia, zombies, Sherlock Holmes, classic fantasy... Even a time-traveling ghost.
The "standard" recommendation for authors is to use a different pen name for each genre, but I'm a rebel (or maybe I'm just lazy) so I'll be publishing everything under one name. Most of my writing will be somewhere under the "speculative fiction" banner, with occasional mad dashes into adjacent realms.
About My Process
I didn't start out with a definite process in mind, and I drifted aimlessly for a while. I've since solidified my process, although I wouldn't call it immutable. And I can't say that I have a specific process for coming up with ideas – they hit me from every direction under all sorts of circumstances. Steampunk Star Wars. 'Droids and starships that run on steam with elaborate Victorian costumes for the entire cast. Ideas are endless.
But once I have an idea, I can't just start writing. That leads to chaos, and while some people thrive on chaos, I do not. So I let the idea mature, flesh it out. Dwell on it when I have insomnia. Then, once I think I have it ready, I write the outline and character designs. As an author I need to know my characters if they're not going to be flat and tasteless when they arrive on the page. Motivations, backgrounds... How they react in a scene depends on my understanding of them. And the plot... Let me tell you, I struggle mightily trying to get it organized. I've tried all sorts of tools and find myself switching from one to another as I grow frustrated. And I almost always end up back at the most uninspired tool of all – a spreadsheet. It's absurd, I know, but just a list of plot points that I can move around and add to somehow reduces the anxiety I feel about getting the organization just right.
Once I have the plot and characters set, I start writing. I write the scenes chronologically (the order they appear in the book, anyway), and don't do any sort of revision until I reach the end. The only concession I make to revision while writing the story, is that I keep a TODO list of all of the things I know I need to change, so that when the first draft is done, I have a ready list of work to do.
One caveat about my claim about not doing revision while writing the first draft: I have, at times, gotten myself in a tough situation from time to time, and had to go back and delete some of the previous scenes and restart. When I'm writing the outline, I don't always know exactly how the characters will react once they're in the scene. And then they do something that is so impossible to reconcile with the rest of the plot that I have to go back and adjust some assumptions and start again where things went off the rails.
So, I've gotten the first draft has been completed. I know I should be proud of myself, but I know there's that lengthy TODO list, plus I'm sure I'll think of a bunch of other things while I fix those. And so I begin the first revision.
