
The story is about honesty. It’s about trust. It’s about redemption and finding strength within oneself, both physical and emotional. It’s about how people sometimes get sucked down into life’s wild and random undertow…and how some of them can still get up again even when they do. But most of all, the story is about love: the love that exists between friends who support each other and are willing to call one another on their shit; the love between family who are willing to protect each other even to the point of blindness; and – especially – the love that exists between lovers who are searching for someone to hold onto, both in the cold, clutching night and the warm, bright day.
I’ve written many stories over my life. Some of them were just for the fun, others were for the challenge, still others were because I wanted to make an impression. None of them have I enjoyed imagining and writing so much as this one, though. It might not end up being my most powerful, my most popular, or even my best work. But it’s been the most true, in its people and their feelings, their failures and their successes.
And that’s made it worth it.
First Choices [includes yet another “Finding Mister Wright” free write]
Writing has a lot to do with first choices. We write from the tips of our fingers, trying to get down all the words running in our heads. When we sit back and take a read through what's on the paper or screen, we can start to second-guess those words. I've written...
“Storytelling is everything.”
I just got back from a work conference on television technology and production (that's my day job). I had a great time, as I always do, connecting and reconnecting with colleagues from across the country, and learning new lessons from faculty, staff, and students...
Down Days (plus a “Finding Mister Wright” short!)
I'd felt pretty down on myself the last few days. It happens: every so often, I look at my various hit statistics and comment numbers, and I start to doubt my skill, especially in comparison to other writers. It always seems like everybody else is getting hundreds of...
Update
I've been away from blogger land for a while, but I'm getting better. Thanks to everyone for your emails, messages, and support. It's meant a lot just to know I'm not alone. Just a brief update to assure those of my followers who are still with me that I'm not dead....

A New Day for “From Hell”
As of 10:22pm ET, Thursday, March 12, 2015, I finished the content pass edit of my pseudo-novel, the homoerotic space opera western From Hell: A Love Story. I started my Borderlands story of “How the Commando Got His Turret” in July 2013. It's grown and changed quite...
January 2015 (writing) recap
I figured I'd better put something up here so folks haven't think I've died or otherwise slipped off the planet. While it may seem - from the non-existence of posts on this blog since the end of 2014 - that I haven't been doing any writing, I've actually been doing a...
Third Time Charmed
Today, I posted the final chapter of my sci-fi western romance, "From Hell: A Love Story." It's the third story I've finished this year, "Finding Mister Wright" and Fearless being the other two. I always get a rush of mixed feelings whenever I write the last words to...
That whispering in my ear….
I got a question about my writing the other day: Do you picture your characters in your head, do you hear their voices? Do they flesh out the more you entertain them and actually write about them? … Do you even start out with distinct picture of a character/situation...
Flipping the coin
Last time, I talked about writing villains. Everybody had great comments, but Vanessa's sparked a new idea in me. In my head (sometimes on paper), I have backstories for every character who walks onto my pages for any more than a sentence or two. Most of these...
Clear as Crystal? Not quite. [Free write]
The knocks burst a staccato beat through the flat, startling on the first and annoying on every one to follow. Findlay Raske lurched up from the bed, snapping one drooping side of his pyjama bottoms back into proper place above his hip. “All right, all right,” he...