You don't want to be a writer.

Inspired a bit by a recent post by fellow author Ben Cheah. Check his stuff out, btw.

 People tell me they **want** to be a writer.

No, you don't.

Seriously, you don't.

Look, you can hotwire your brain to write. It's relatively easy. I did it to myself when I was 16. I wasn't even trying. I just wanted this idea out of my head. Half a million words later, I had novels on my hands.

To be a writer, your brain is basically ON all the time.

You're (re)writing TV shows and books. You're calling plot twists.

When the story goes a different way, you want to rewrite it because your idea really was better.

That news story is now part of your thriller.

Your demonic plot to destroy a city becomes current events within a year or two.

You're basing people on friends. 

If you're male, you ask the women you use as models what their bust size is, because bra holsters are dictated by boob size.

Then your friends are asking how you came up with this great character... that they don't recognize as themselves.

You didn't pay attention to that conversation with friends / family about something really important to them, because something they said ten minutes ago started a plot outline in your brain.

Your brain occasionally overclocks from writing from 8-6, occasionally remembering to eat.

You take a break so  your brain can cool down, but then the compulsion to keep writing presses on your brain like a heavy blanket.

You need a notebook next to your bed so you can make notes--because the ideas don't let you sleep until you write them down.

It's why I tell people that there's a difference between "I want to be a writer" and "I have to be a writer." Because there is.

If you want to be a writer ... no, you don't. If I had my druthers, I'd have been an electrician or a plumber. I'd probably be using electricity to kill people in murder mysteries, but I'd have a 9-5 I didn't have to take home with me.

If you HAVE to be a writer, you don't have a choice. Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.

But it's binary. You are a writer, and you write, because you have to. 

Or you WANT to be a writer, and you don't write.

What makes Urban fantasy?

[EDIT: I've been corrected. Anita Blake took place in Saint Louis. Which tells you exactly how little of an impression it made]

What makes Urban fantasy?

If you said "It's Fantasy in a city, duh" you'd be right.

Then where's the city?

You see, one of the things I've always taken into account when writing my UF novels is that the city is a character. Like the Enterprise in Star Trek, the city itself plays a significant part in the story. It was one of my big problems with Anita Blake novels -- before they became porn-- I never got a sense that the city was a part of the story. The novels took place in Seattle Saint Louis, but they felt like they could have taken place anywhere. The same with Larry Correia's Monster Hunters or Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville series.

They felt like modern fantasy, but not necessarily urban fantasy. 

For example, when I think of a sense of place, Correia's Monster Hunters live in a southern compound. There are forests. There are swamps. There aren't many cities, except in Monster Hunter: Legion, where he trashes Las Vegas, and sections of Siege that took place in Russia. With Carrie Vaughn, Kitty Norville's town could be any town with a radio station on one end, and wilderness on the other... even though it's supposed to be Denver, nothing felt that distinct. My memory may be failing me, but to be honest, if there were distinct elements of each city, they left no impression with me at all.

At the very start of Urban Fantasy, Fred Saberhagen set Dracula in Chicago. Saberhagen's Old Friend of the Family ended with a vampire throwdown, on top of the frozen river running through the city. For Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden, Chicago is deeply relevant for the setting, especially in his most recent novel, Battle Ground.

On the other end of the scale, Urban Fantasy makes the setting seriously matter. 

Correia's Grimnoir series makes each city feel distinct, especially as he trashes it. 

Despite the fact that she's often listed under romance, Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark Hunters world usually did a fairly good job capturing the setting of New Orleans and getting a feel for the city as a whole--from the atmosphere to the accents. 

John Ringo did much the same for Monster Hunter Memoirs, both in New Orleans and the other cities his hero Chad was stationed. 

Russell Newquist's War Demons gave me a good sense of Georgia--up to and including a final fight in a football stadium.

Even in fictional cities like Silver Empire's superhero novels, each city has a unique tone and feel to it. Morgan Newquist does a great job in building her Serenity city--which feels very corporate, with put-on sophistication that reminds me of Manhattan elitists. Kai Wai Cheah's Hollow City vividly reminds me of San Francisco culture with Chicago corruption. It was much the same in Kim Harrison's Hollows series -- she's altered the world so much that I have not idea how much of her Cincinnati is real and how much is fictional, but it is distinct.

This was very much my own thought process when I wrote Saint Tommy NYPD or Love at First Bite. And they're both less "New York City" novels as they are local neighborhood novels. New York City is made up of local areas that are as distinct from each other as cities are from one another. With Love at First Bite, Manhattan vampire bars feel different than fighting vampires in a Queens cemetery, which feels different than working around San Francisco (even before San Francisco streets turned to feces and needles). The vampire bar near Mount Sinai isn't the bar near Alphabet city. 

For Saint Tommy, he doesn't have to deal with mafiosi or a heavy street gang presence, because they're in different neighborhoods... except for MS-13, which is closing in on several fronts. Heck, even the tactics of fighting in each neighborhood is different. In Brooklyn, you can launch an armed ambush by hiding armies down side streets. In King's Point, individual homes have their own personal docks. When I wrote the books, I was certain that committing a crime in broad daylight would earn the perp a good stomping by a passerby, then move along. (... since then, my faith in the ornery average New Yorker has been massively shaken) In later books, I make use of local geography and sites that you don't have in any tour book. 

Of course, I have a car chase that requires not only knowing traffic patterns, but also ways around them. 

In fact, that's part of what gives many of the above UF novels their feel--the city has an overall feel, and each neighborhood has their own feel. A major plot point of Battle Ground involved a fae army walking into the wrong part of Chicago, as well as local architecture being tactically useful... even Chicago pizza is a plot element. No two parts of Kim Harrison's Cincinnati are alike, but the overall feel of the city is consistent. Monster Hunter Legion could only have taken place in Las Vegas for multiple reasons. The same with Fred Saberhagen and Chicago.

So, TLDR: in Urban Fantasy, the city should be a part of the story, a player in its own right, with its own feel and own distinct areas. Otherwise, it's contemporary fantasy. Don't get me wrong, all but one of the authors mentioned here have written great books. But are they urban fantasy?

I'll make you a challenge. Read any of my UF to get a feel for what I mean, then read the others. Then tell me if I'm wrong.**

**Publisher links below.

Love at First Bite

Honor at Stake: https://silverempire.org/product/honor-at-stake/ref/274

Demons are Forever: https://silverempire.org/product/demons-are-forever/ref/274

Live and Let Bite: https://silverempire.org/product/live-and-let-bite/ref/274

Good to the Last Drop: https://silverempire.org/.../good-to-the-last-drop/ref/274

Saint Tommy, NYPD

Hell Spawn ( #1): https://silverempire.org/product/hell-spawn/ref/274/

Death Cult (#2) https://silverempire.org/product/death-cult/ref/274

Infernal Affairs (#3) https://silverempire.org/product/infernal-affairs/ref/274

Lupus Dei (Short Story) https://silverempire.org/newsletter/

City of Shadows (#4) https://silverempire.org/product/city-of-shadows/ref/274

Crusader (#5) https://silverempire.org/product/crusader/ref/274

Deus Vult (#6) https://silverempire.org/product/deus-vult/ref/274

Coven (#7) https://silverempire.org/product/coven/ref/274

Hussar (#8) https://silverempire.org/product/hussar/ref/274 

Fed up and Ante Up

You may have noticed that my sentiments are one part "fed up with stupidity" and a BS tolerance level that is only a few steps short of honey badger. After Italy, I was already on "Why, yes, I do want people to die, thank you," and in May, I was #NoLivesMatter.

Which explains my Saint Tommy NYPD series.

Those who've read it don't really need an explanation. I've taken my unfair share of sacred cows and threw them on the grill, still mooing.

And no, not the "sacred cows" that writers think are "edgy" as they pat themselves on the back for "bravely writing about." (Even though they're "bravely writing about" the same cardboard stereotypes for decades, no matter how false they've been proven.)

It helps that the sacred cows of New York City are the people with power. Since I like having my villains with all the advantages, I made them politically connected. considering where I live, that made the power politics leftist politics.

The funny thing is that, while every psycho negative review has labeled me right-wing propaganda, I probably would have done the same thing had I used a right-wing town/ city / state. I would have found ... something. Totally different things, but something. 

So the first monster was part of a protected political class, and had political support behind it. So was the Death Cult of #2 and the ultimate creature of Infernal Affairs.

Come to think of it, no matter what country or state I put Tommy in, I make sure that evil is tied closely with secular and political power...

Yes. This might -- just MIGHT, grant you-- have something to do with the fact that I think politics is borderline demonic. 

As Frank Herbert said, "Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.”

I'm on board that train, and it will have to derail to get me off of it

It is in part BECAUSE these people are pathological that it makes it easy for me (and most of my readers) to believe that they will do anything to keep that power. Blackmail? Bribe? Steal? Sacrifice a marriage? Sacrifice a person? 

Sacrifice your soul? 

That's the easy part. Politicians don't have one.

And of course, it's not just politicians who are in politics. Politics is a path to power. Whether it's interpersonal, education, international, it's one sort of power or another.

And the end of the day, it all comes back to making the villains as powerful as I can make them. 

Here's a villain, he's got all of his personal and physical strengths, and ON TOP OF THAT, he's untouchable.

Stacked decks have got nothing on me.

It's why I'm amused when reviewers and fellow authors think that I can't top X scene for my Saint Tommy novels. 

How can the next villain be a threat?

The answer's easy, because it's always the same. Just keep changing the game. 

Here's a serial killer. 

Now here's an anonymous attempt at revenge. 

Now here's a bounty on our hero. 

Here are Jihadis. Now find the sex traffickers. Fight this dragon. 

Go to war with a Lovecraftian Bond villain. 

Here's a conspiracy from within. Here's a cult, but now everyone has a gun.

Eventually, as a last resort, there's the video game trope of "Yes, here are all of the major villains you've defeated ... but now they're just as difficult to defeat, they've had a learning curve, and they're just acting as minions to the main villain."

So yeah, I still have some tricks up my sleeve.

Sometimes, all you need is a hero who will be beaten half to Hell, look at what's coming at him next, and still says "Bring it."

Anyway, if this sounds like fun, check out St. Tommy NYPD, right here.

Coven: Upping the Ante

One of the fun things about writing Coven was an idea that Hans Schantz suggested. He probably doesn't even recognize his original idea, given what I'd done to it. 

The idea? Take away Tommy's charisms.

Granted, by this point in the series, I'd given him two other major weapons that increased his chances of survival. Some people think that there's no way I can threaten Tommy anymore.

Challenge accepted. Time to bring out a bigger hammer.

Yeah, I know. How can I bring out a bigger hammer after the end of #6, Deus Vult?

What? You didn't think Tommy would be allowed to KEEP that particular weapon, did you?

Not to mention, by the end of DV, Tommy is well and truly battered, beaten, and knocked around. Every tool in his arsenal had been pushed to the limit, drained, damaged, and broken.

For Coven, I was going to bring him back home. Then I was going to hurt him.

For those who haven't read my previous novels, I get interesting results when I hurt my characters. Usually, more stuff blows up.

Let's knock around his partner. Yeah. Alex has been a little TOO lucky. In every novel, Tommy has thrown himself on every threat that could have killed Alex -- and not because Tommy thinks he's going to survive, but he thinks he has a better chance of surviving than his older partner.

And, as you can see in the description of the book, we're going to target Tommy's children. Because that will not create ANY problems for the poor dumb SOB who thinks that's a good idea.

See, there are always multiple ways to juggle threats. Previous novels have mostly used one massive threats, compiled of multiple layers and parts.

Another option is simply taking "smaller" threats and throwing them at our hero, and where he's weakest. I get to explore more sides to our hero, and develop the people around him better.

Granted, given everything that his family has been through, calling them "the weak spot" might be misleading.

And of course, the ultimate threat is ... well, it's a little bit of Jim Butcher, and a little bit of J. Michael Straczynski.

[Yes, I know that JMS has gone a little bit off the rails, letting politics into his brain like a poison. Apparently, he broke up with his wife ("By any means necessary" script writer Kathryn Drennen) and shacked up with Patricia Tallman. Tallman is an ultra-lefty. Apparently, banging a redhead with that level of dementia turns politics into an STD. This doesn't mean his previous writing advice sucks]

From Butcher, I stole the idea that, well, when in doubt, just increase the threat level.

From JMS, I took his Amazing Spider Man concept that supervillains are mirrors of our hero. Black mirrors, false mirrors. Want to be mirrors. That sort of thing. (Red Skull is a false patriot, caring nothing for country, but only himself. Spider-Man's enemies were largely other animal themes)

So, what do I do to Tommy? Who's his Moriarty? Well, that was book 6's villain. So we need a Sebastian Moran-- someone who can match Tommy in the street.

We needed another true believer.

Heh heh heh

Buy it on Amazon.

Or buy from the Publisher

Damned Politics

Ya know, when I started writing my St. Tommy NYPD novels, I didn't exactly think that I would be writing future events.

Take book one, Hell Spawn.

It had an offhand, casual mention of Black Lives Matter after our hero arrests a serial killer. The Serial killer is in the "right" profession and thus call out BLM,... because reasons.

There were, of course, reviewers who cringed that I even mentioned BLM.

I wonder if their thoughts on the matter would change any now?

We won't even go into what I did to the mayor, or the death cult. I just figured I would have the mayor as an idiot that concealed a truly darker side to the office. (no spoilers). But Death Cult came out only three months before NY states' Moloch bill. (I forget, does that include killing children ten days after birth?)

And, of course, I do expect social media to "fact check" my sarcasm, telling me that it wasn't called the Moloch Bill, blah blah blah.

Then de Blasio goes and shows exactly how much of a pure f***ing psychopath **he** really is. Here I thought he was just a moron and a thief. Now he wants to destroy the entire city. 

The endgame of the first trilogy is being enacted on the streets of New York city this very minute with this stupid catch and release "bail reform: nonsense

And since I wanted to get away from politics for later books, I didn't even want to touch the governor's office.

Then Cuomo goes and shows that, yes, he's a straight up f***ing mass murderer.

I mean, really guys? I mean, in 2019 I thought that my darkest dreams could not conceive of something so twisted and evil that the Democrats would not put it on their platform.

But killing off the elderly? Not even assisted suicide, or euthanasia, or any of the nice terms they like to throw around. But straight up bio-warfare the old fashioned way.

I mean, good God, last year I came out with Crusader: sex trafficking run by a succubus in conjunction with Jihadis.

This year: is there any Leftist who isn't a supporter of Epstein's client list?

The slippery slope used to be "gay marriage to pedophilia" (which took five years).

Now it's "close the churches" to "burn the churches" in five MONTHS.

I think I preferred it when I could at least imagine that they were misguided idiots instead of straight up fiends from the pit.

It used to take full on wartime propaganda to dehumanize the enemy to such a state that we perceived them as something so monstrous and alien that we didn't even blink at killing them.

Now all I have to do is listen to what comes out of their mouths.

.... This is the point where I should mention that you should vote in the Dragon Awards before this Sunday, here's My Dragon Award ballot is here and here is where you should vote. But I don't feel like doing PR today.

Building a Saint

I've been going through a lot of old posts lately as I cut them up and turn them into Twitter threads. It's had some success, and there are people who have never read them before. I might get around to rewriting them here as well. Because there are a lot of things that have changed lately, and some notes I need to stress.

But I noticed I put in a LOT of thought into creating Marco and Amanda for Honor at Stake, et al. Make them polar opposites, yet very similar. How does each one work within the world I've made for them. That sort of thing.

I've never done that for Tommy Nolan.

It's odd. Because I tend to put in a TON of thought into character and biography. Probably too much. My original thought of character creation was to make a character, build a whole biography, wind them up, drop them in a situation, then let them wander. 

Every book prior to Hell Spawn was a seat of the pants affair.

Then along came Saint Tommy. And I haven't needed to do anything for him on that scale.

Sure, I do have more background on him in my head, but that's only come up within the last few books. And I don't even mean the books that are published yet. Book #8, Hussar, is where I have the germ of an idea for more of Tommy's background.

When I wrote Hell Spawn, all I knew about Tommy was that he was married with a kid, he was homeschooled, and more or less educated via the Opus Dei. I mentioned that he and his wife had "family out of state." When I needed someplace to stash Mariel and the kids during Saint Tommy abroad (City of Shadows, Crusader, and Deus Vult), I invented family in Tennessee.

That was the extent of my knowledge of Tommy's background.

Yes, there is little bits and pieces of Tommy Nolan scattered throughout my books. A character of the same name has appeared in Honor at Stake, and in A Pius Stand, but they are officially not the same person. Silver Empire wants separate IPs. There's nothing that forbids reader headcanon.

But even if you included his appearances in both of them, there was nothing that really added to the character. 

Now, in part, this was done in order to keep down the cast of characters. Hell Spawn was after some reviewers were confused by the cast of The Pius Trilogy, and even the Love at First Bite series spiraled into a sizable cast.

Obviously, if I haven't written and designed Tommy's parents, I can't have him call them for help or advice, or have subplots with them. The same with grandparents or in-laws.

Obviously, this hasn't worked in the long run. I tried to downplay the existence of everyone else in Hell Spawn as much as was reasonable. Wouldn't want people to get confused, after all. Then again, it was a first person point of view, how confused could people get?

Reading some of the dumber one star reviews, pretty confused. But those were 100% pure moron, so I don't feel so bad. But they weren't confused about characters. So, win!

And yes, after a while, the cast has spiraled. Like everything else in my writing. 

• The ME, Doctor Sinead Holland
• Father Richard Freeman, PhD
• Father Michael Pearson
• Bokor Baracus (after a fashion)
• Alex Packard
• Jeremy
• Lena
• Mariel 
• Grace
• William Carlton
• Texas Ranger Lloyd Lermon (wait for Hussar)
• Pope Pius XIII
• Aux Bishop Xavier "XO" O'Brian

Now, all 13 of these people have not yet shown up on the page at the same time, or even in the same book. Thankfully. Yet. I don't have that planned, either, but we'll see.

I will note that I've had no reviews or comments asking about Tommy's background. No one. No one cares. In fact, the only person asking for it is my wife, when I mentioned a character idea I was going to use in Hussar, but I postponed for Dark Web. Assuming that Dark Web happens as outlined.

Park of it has been influenced by the Pulp crew I deal with online. In part because, well, we don't have anything about the Shadow's background, do we? He used to be a really bad guy, he now kills really bad guys with dual wielding forty-fives.

There's more than a few other influences about the Shadow as well. But then, I have more than a few characters who can say yes to "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men." Tommy isn't technically one of them.

All I've really needed from Tommy for his character has been is his acts and his works, as well as his faith. His social life is his family and his church--gun club, soup kitchen, prayer rallies, etc. In Infernal Affairs, his wife is pregnant, so they do get some alone time.

The one thing I've had to put work into --and I've put work into it--was giving him a flaw. Well, a few flaws. He has a temper. He gets angry. He rarely gives into it, so everyone looks at him like he has three heads when he mentions it.
His confessions are like the following.

"Bless me father for I have sinned, it's been a week since my last confession.""Tommy, honestly, what could you have done in a week?""I cuffed a child molester. I wanted to hit him upside the head.""Did you?""No. But I was probably a little rough with the cuffs.""... Tommy? Take a breath."

Over time, I do have things that get to him. And his anger is where demons get at him... because the only anger Tommy feels is safe is anger at himself. You can see where that can go wrong. 
The solution to these little dark nights is reason and rationality. There was a guilt trip an editor wanted me to inflict on Tommy in book one. My solution? Directly address it as completely irrational from his perspective, because that would have required him to be omniscient.

But hitting him where it hurts means he feels first, and thinks later. Heh heh heh.

It's odd. I wrote Hell Spawn in late 2017 for release in late 2018, and now I've finished book 10, and I'm having trouble thinking back to what everything was like writing book one. I guess it's good I'm thinking about it while I can.

If you haven't read Hell Spawn or any of the others yet, now's a good time to start, because the series is coming to a head.

Or should I say that all Hell is about to break loose?

Villain As Hero?

If I have to hear one more BS statement about how "Villains always think they're the good guy," I think I'm going to hit someone.

This is a lie. Because it assumes way too much about what happens inside of the villain's head.

Let's face it, every real world vile sumbitch has not, does not, and never has consider "good" or "bad" in their equations. They considered what was good for them. You can always say that they're the hero of their own story, but never, ever say that they think that they're the good guy. 

Why?

Because "I'm the hero" is the sort of narcissism you can see in ... anyone selfish enough to pull off villainous deeds. Because each bad guy must start with the premise that "I need to do X to Y because my needs are more important than Ys."

Evil thinks that it is the center of the universe. Of course it's the hero. But the only good they see is their own. 

Let's take the Devil...

Work with me here, I've got a punchline...

Traditionally (no, not Lucifer's non-Christian heresy) Satan literally thinks he knows better than God-- even though it is impossible. Satan sees humans as so beneath angels it's ridiculous. 

"Oh, but Satan was the good guy of Paradise Lost." No, he was the protagonist. There's a difference. So was Dexter in the Jeff Lindsay books. But at the end of the day, Satan would rather reign in Hell, because serving is beneath him. Because "he knows better."

Notice, I am being very picky in my word choice. I'm talking about people who are villains, not necessarily antagonists. I've done this blog before, I'm not doing that again. 

Villains are evil. To think that they believe themselves as "the good guy" is idiotic. Hell, in most versions of the Joker I've ever seen, he will out and out boast that he's evil and just having so much fun.

Pick a serial killer. Jeffery Dahmer is my usual example. He had a perfectly healthy middle class background growing up .... killed his first victim when he was a teenager. Grew up to be a rapist sodomite and cannibal murderer. Ted Bundy, another psychopath, was a total narcissist who even blamed his victims -- who he strangled to death as he raped them.

Villains don't care about good or bad. Just what they want. They might add some self-justification from time to time ... but that's only for the highly reflective jerks.

And yes, this is not to say that villains are Johnny one note all the time. Perhaps one of the better bits from Man of La Mancha is where we find a caravan of thugs singing to a bird "with the gentility of truly brutal men."

Don't believe me? Hitler was a vegetarian who painted roses. Eichmann -- despite every filmed attempt to make him look sinister -- was the most boring bureaucrat ever tried for mass murder, who out and out said "Every time I thought about what I was doing, it made me ill. So I just didn't think about it."

... If you ever want to know what goes through the mind of a low level minion, Eichmann's your guy. The answer being "Very little."

Of course, when writing, do try to give your villain as much background as you give your hero. You don't necessarily need it, but we need to get a sense of the character.

Heck, use some of my own bad guys lately. It's possibly the least amount of background I've given a villain.

Hell Spawn featured a possessed serial killer -- most of the time, everyone interacted with the demon. But the ultimate reveal is that the demon and the host were in sync, and that tells you everything you need to know about that psycho. 

Death Cult had a truly political animal. It's amazing how much power for its own sake can go.

Infernal Affairs ... well, let's just say that the villain monologue does help.

City of Shadows, Crusader and Deus Vult actually did a fairly good job with their villains.

And yes, they are unremitting evil, AND they think they're the hero of their own little worlds. Heh heh heh.

Clerical Error: out now

Clerical Error is out.

This one is going to be interesting.

There are no fights.

There are no explosions.

There are no ... okay, there's one murder.

Maybe one or two people are just a wee bit injured.

But no one is shot. Or stabbed. Or poisoned. 

A lot of this book falls under your traditional cozy. There's a lot of talking and maneuvering. There's a lot of local politicking and environment...

It helps that this is a historical novel dealing with local issues and murder in 1976.

James is a college philosophy professor with too much time on his hands. When an old classmate asks for a favor, he drops in with little notion of what’s ready for him.

The year is 1976, during the dark times – for both the Catholic Church and New York City.

James’ college classmate is Father Gus Sadowski, the pastor of Saints Gabriel, Columcille, and Rocco church in the middle of Bed-Sty, where there drive by criminals are on one side of the parish, and the mob is one the other. Father Gus is all alone to run the parish, and needs some help – because the live-in priest in the attic, Father Timothy A. Lessner, is worse than useless.

When Lessner takes a tumble down the stairs in the middle of the night, the casual favor has turned into a nightmare.

Can James solve the mystery of who killed Lessner before he finds himself the main suspect?

So, obviously, this is different for me.

The joke I've been using has been "If things go wrong, I'll just blame the co-author."

Since the co-author is my father, that's part of the joke.

Anyway, it's out. I think you can even return e-books if you don't like them. So give it a shot.

Be well all.

2020 Hindsight

A new year has arrived. Time to get serious ... about ... something.

Let's start simple.

If I had to do all of this all over again, would I?

Probably not the same way, no.

At this point in my life, I can look back and see that I've wasted years.

Follow the bouncing ball of my brain a little.

2000-2004, I spent time in college, getting two bachelor's degrees and a masters degrees.

One bachelor's degree in Philosophy gave me five books (Love at First Bite, A Philosophy for Living).

The other BA and the Master's gave me six books (five books of The Pius Trilogy, For all their wars are Merry).

One undergraduate glass in theology led to six books and counting.

Then I made the mistake of going for a PhD.

Why mistake? A PhD is a good thing to have. It makes one qualified to teach at any educational institution. 

One, I didn't know then that "PhD" at this particular university meant that you could glad-hand and fellate the egos of the right professors at the right time, instead of you know, doing the work. Work I could do easily enough. Politicking? Not so much.

I jumped ship in December of 2006, never to return.

From 2007-2012, I wasted even more time, going the "proper" route in publication. 

So, from 2005-2012, I should probably have been writing books. If you think I write fast now, just imagine how much faster I'd be writing if I had 7 more years of practice. Or how many more books I would have written? I'd be closing in on 30 books by now. Maybe more.

In retrospect, I should have gotten a minor in graphic design so I could make book covers. Or courses in marketing for advertising books.

Hell. Technically, I should have become an electrician. By this point, I'd be making six figures a year, and I could write books in my spare time about how to burn houses down with the right wiring... or the improper wiring.

Anyway, at the end of the day, I'm not doing too terrible. I met my wife because of my books. I have a fan base I enjoy interacting with.

Besides. I've been compelled to write stories since I was 16. I didn't really have an option about writing. it's always just been a matter of what the content was.

Anyway. 

For reasons of sanity, this year will be slightly slower than last year. 2019 saw the publication of nine books. Not counting the anthologies.

2020 will see me writing a little less and editing more. I have books in my queue that I haven't looked at in a decade. And the last time I edited stuff and released it, it went over fairly well.

There will also be more Saint Tommy books en route. Though probably not another six this year.

If you have a minute, check my books on Amazon, (here or on the right margin) and save a life -- left a review.

Be well all, and happy new year.

NEW RELEASE: PLUTO

My year of anthologies continues.

You .... okay, you actually may not know this one, but this has been an entire year of anthologies for me.

There was the announcement just this week about Beyond the Wild: A Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Anthology,

Storming Area 51

Lupus Dei -- a short story that comes with a subscription to Silver Empire's newsletter.

Supernatural Streets, which is coming ....sooner or later, and edited by Amie Gibbons

And now, finally, Pluto, from Tuscany Bay books.  Yes, I actually am in this one.  

Pluto, the Roman god of death and wealth, ruled the underworld far away from all of the other gods. So it was only fitting when, in 1930 and working on a theorized ninth planet proposed by Percival Lowell, Clyde Tombaugh used the telescope at Lowell Observatory to locate the ninth planet in our solar system, far, far away from its brothers and sister.

Then came that day in July of 2015. Like the Romans when they found themselves within Pluto’s realm and discovered it was nothing like the desolate fires of damnation assigned to his Greek counterpart, Hades, those of us in modern time discovered that Pluto was nothing like we had imagined since 1930.

That iconic photo of Pluto, with the heart-shaped plain later named Tombaugh Regio, told us that there was so much more to the planet. First, it was not blue and not just solid ice as so many had expected it to be. Just like Pluto’s mythological domain, the planet displayed a variety of features and composition.

In this volume, what you will find in the pages that follow are twenty-one amazing stories of death and wealth set around a wandering cousin far out in the cold edges of our solar system. You will find Vikings, knights, warriors defending home and hearth, of triumph and tragedy, and, yes, even the god himself. You will read tales of great courage and great loss. Of sacrifice for a greater good and of justice delivered to the overly greedy. You will even find the aforementioned Walt Disney himself.

You can find the book right here.

I am now an Amazon bestseller

So this has been an interesting few days.

First, my latest release, Deus Vult, became an Amazon bestseller. Practically overnight, from what I can tell. 

It's the little orange tag

Who knew?

(Everyone. Apparently, everyone knew.)

That isn't even the impressive part.

Tuesday, things became a little more interesting.

It seems that Deus Vult made such a good impression, it brought Hell Spawn to #1 as well.

But wait, there's more.

We didn't just make bestseller in Christian Fantasy, but one or two more categories.

So ... these are apparently doing fairly well.

A joke I like to tell my family is that of course I'm doing well -- my major competition in Christian fantasy is dead. CS Lewis hasn't come out with a Narnia novel in decades. :)

But in all seriousness, it's going well. Deus Vult is coming along, so is Hell Spawn.

And then there are reviews by the great author Adam Lane Smith, author of Making Peace.

So... yeah... there's that.

If you haven't read them yet, you can get the entire series via the kickstarter page, or just grab them from Amazon.


Be well all.

Table of Contents for Deus Vult

For those of you who are wondering, well, this is what the chapter headings for my novel Deus Vult ** look like.

Do any of these, perchance, look familiar?

Chapter 1: Visitation 

Chapter 2: Your Mission 

Chapter 3: Walking the grid 

Chapter 4: Behind the Wall of Downey 

Chapter 5: Hell Spawn 

Chapter 6: The Evil in the Walls 

Chapter 7: Cardinal Tape 

Chapter 8: Beyond Bullets 

Chapter 9: The Exorcist

Chapter 10: Death Cult 

Chapter 11: The Essex Horror 

Chapter 12: Infernal Affairs 

Chapter 14: The Dreams in the Summer House 

Chapter 14: Campus of Shadows 

Chapter 15: The Doom That Came to Dunwich U 

Chapter 16: Deal with the Devil … But Only at Gunpoint 

Chapter 17: House in the Mist

Chapter 18: The Last Statement of George Matchett 

Chapter 19: Whispers in Darkness 

Chapter 20: A Shadow over Essex 

Chapter 21: At the Cliffs of Madness 

Chapter 22: The Call of Tiamat 

Chapter 23: Unleash Heaven 

Chapter 24: Crusader

Heh heh heh.

Let's just say that there's a reason I keep this in Essex, Massachusetts. And it's not just because I wanted to blow up parts around Boston.

And, if for some reason, you have been waiting for the last book in the planned series to drop... buy all six books right here in the Kickstarter for the audio book. If you do buy all six, in any format, it comes with the audiobook. And who knows, the stretch goals will probably have audio books for the other novels in the series.

Be well all.

**If you're looking for the E-book version of Deus Vult, click here. Note, all links on my blog are part of the Amazon affiliate program, meaning that I get a small cut of selling my own book. This does not increase the price you pay in any way whatsoever. The only reason I'm even bringing it up is because Amazon legal CYA BS demands it of me.

NEW RELEASE: #DEUSVULT #PulpRev

And it's here, the book that Amazon couldn't kill. Despite the ups, the downs, and the sideways bumps this tale has gone, it's made it back onto Amazon. 

But at the end of the day, here it is.

Book six of Saint Tommy, NYPD releases today.

Title: Deus Vult. 

(Click here to see the e-version)**

It's going to be a big one.

Very big.

To start with, Tommy can't even go on vacation without something going terribly wrong.

God wills it. A Saint must find a way. 

All Tommy Nolan wants is some peace to enjoy his family. He’s been to hell and back, and now he needs a break. 

But evil doesn’t need to take a breather, and now the Vatican is back on his doorstep asking for help.

A nearby monastery has been desecrated and the exorcist monks murdered in the most brutal ways imaginable. A legion of demons is gathering for something big, and Tommy’s the saint they need to help.

An old enemy is the ally he needs, but can Tommy trust him? Can they track down all of the demons in time?

And what does the Necronomicon have to do with it all? 

Read Deus Vult today and find out!

This has everything come together. And I mean it. In ways that I can't even articulate without spoiling it. Pick a book. Pick an element from a book. Any element. Yes, it all ties together. Demons, dealt cults, warlocks, gangs, terrorists, succubi, wealthy psychopaths.... all of them.

I should also mention that this one takes place in Massachusetts. That's something we're going to discuss in a future blog post. Heh heh heh.

And did I mention that we have a cover?

I don't know I like it. And it has a small sample of the level of devastation that's in the novel. A very small sample.

As in "you think Harry Dresden leaves property damage"? That's cute. Even Dresden would be impressed by everything that gets trashed in this book. And he'd be perfectly happy with it, because none of it would be his fault... Okay, some of it would be his fault. Because Dresden.

But yeah. I slaughter a monastery full of monks. I have several combat exorcisms. I have shootouts. And monsters. And bugs. And demons. And dragons. And heavy artillery. And powered armor. And demonic books. Killer topiary. Killer fishmen. And a little Lovecraft. And this time, the enemies are Legion.

And Deus Vult, mother, fucker.

As you can see, it's already doing well, before I announced it.

This might be the best thing I ever wrote, with the most horror, most action, and the biggest stakes.

This is going to be so much fun, it's not even funny.

But it will be awesome.

Buy Deus Vult, right here, and now, today. You are not going to regret it. (E-book here)

And, if for some reason, you have been waiting for the last book in the planned series to drop... buy all six books right here in the Kickstarter for the audio book. If you do buy all six, in any format, it comes with the audiobook. And who knows, the stretch goals will probably have audio books for the other novels in the series.

Be well all.

**Note, all links on my blog are part of the Amazon affiliate program, meaning that I get a small cut of selling my own book. This does not increase the price you pay in any way whatsoever. The only reason I'm even bringing it up is because Amazon legal CYA BS demands it of me.

New Release: Dances With Werewolves, Part 2

And now, we finish up Dances with Werewolves,** just in time for Halloween.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE DRAGON AWARD NOMINATED SERIES LOVE AT FIRST BITE....

Secret Service Agent Wayne Williams is dead. But he has to keep busy somehow. When a coven of witches reports a threat to the President of the United States, it's the sort of threat that must be investigated. But it sounds like a vacation for Wayne.

When the witches start to die, and his consultant seems to be magic, it's time for him to get nasty.

CIA Assassin Catherine Miler is on a mission to kill Baron Samedi," a Prime Minister sacrificing American Tourists. When she chases him down to America, things start to get ... hairy.

Author Matthew Kovach is looking for his own version of Derry Maine. What he finds is the "Community of the old time religion."

All three are about to find themselves embroiled in San Francisco pagans, want to be vampires, pharmaceutical zombies, and New Orleans.

And all three have to survive their consultants on this case -- the Kraft Brothers.

This one has shootouts in the Muir woods, car chases in San Francisco, gun battles in New Orleans, Chicago and New York. They have satanists with horn and fang implants, drugged out zombies, witches, mad gunmen, and for the first time in my books, all three Kraft brothers -- Merle, Dalf, and Tal.

I enjoyed writing this one. There was a ton of madcap action, a lot of insanity, and just plain fun.

If you've picked up part one already, you can get part 2 right here.  

And if you haven't, you can get part one here while you're at it.

Just so you'll have something to read when you're done with Too Secret Service and Dances, then you'll want to stop by the current kickstarter....

Also, if you're interested in starting your Christmas shopping early (EG: I'm done already) then you might want to shop for some good books at a solid price.


**According to new, stupid rules on Amazon, I have to inform you that the links to my book give me a little bit of extra cash for you buying the book from my referral link. all links on my blog are like that.

NEW RELEASE: Dances With WereWolves, A Merle Kraft Novel (part one)

From the creator of Too Secret Service (me) comes the latest self-published thriller....

Dances With Werewolves.

Yes, really. I'm a smartass. If you didn't know before, now you know.

Sigh .... and, according to Amazon, I have to warn you that every link in the entire blog is to connect to an Amazon Affiliates link-- and if it isn't, let me know -- which means I get additional money for selling you my books. And anything else you might purchase from that visit. So if any of you are interested in buying a $1000 television from Amazon, please, click on a link, then buy the tv. :)

Anyway, back to being serious, this book is special.

Because it's a Merle Kraft novel

Secret Service Agent Wayne Williams is dead. But he has to keep busy somehow.

When a coven of witches reports a threat to the President of the United States, it's the sort of threat that must be investigated. But it sounds like a vacation for Wayne.

CIA Assassin Catherine Miler is on a mission to kill Baron Samedi," a Prime Minister sacrificing American Tourists.

Author Matthew Kovach is looking for his own version of Derry Maine.

All three are about to find themselves embroiled in San Francisco pagans, want to be vampires, pharmaceutical zombies, and New Orleans.

And all three have to survive their consultants on this case -- the Kraft Brothers.

If I were to give you a one-sentence summary of the book? Think of it as a modern Live and Let Die.

Take a look, and see what you think about the insanity that is Dances with Werewolves.

And if you're a fan of audio books, please remember the ongoing Kickstarter campaign for Hell Spawn.