A look at my writing process

A new character-driven novella blending monsters, horror, and medieval fantasy.

Thoughts on my nearly two year break from publishing.

An insider’s look at my current book promotion effort

How do we decide which books to say goodbye to?

4 New Stories Just in Time for the Holiday Season

Horror beyond the jump scare.

Detectives investigate a cult in Northern California.

An inside look at what works inspired my upcoming book

A brand new book combining my love of dogs and dark fantasy.

Not everything moves in a straight line. And that is especially true with writing.

Here’s my recommendations for some great horror reads for the 2020 Halloween season.

I read in a book recently that an experiment was done that showed that unfinished projects take up more mental bandwidth than finished projects. The scientists tested this by allowing their subjects to finish some puzzles but not others in a certain allotment of time. The subjects continued to think about the unfinished puzzles afterwards.… Read more: Unfinished Projects

Yes, martial arts are supposed to be about self defense or combat. Injure, maim, and take out the threat. But there’s a difference between training and applying the arts in real life. One of the aspects of martial arts where people struggle with is their ego and their desire to win. This is rampant in… Read more: Do you really want to hurt me?

I’m excited to be able to share the cover for my upcoming fantasy novel, The Rise of the Fallen, which will be released on November 15, 2017. The cover art was created by John Anthony Di Giovanni and the cover design with the incredible work on the lettering was done by Shawn T. King. It… Read more: Cover Reveal: The Rise of the Fallen

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” -Henry David Thoreau

Up here in Northern California, we’ve been under a cloud of smoke for a week from the fires in Napa and Sonoma. Horridly beautiful colors in the sky. Ash descending on our cars. Burning in the back of our throats. I am miles away and outside of the reach of the fire itself, but the… Read more: Smoke in the Air

Not really. Maybe not yet. Though I’ve got a really good idea for a lifestyle brand that does sell hats. I’ve got a lot of good ideas. Just as I’m sure you do. So how come those ideas never materialize? Was it just a bad idea? Can an idea be good or bad? Until it… Read more: Hats for sale

A jacket is a jacket. A hat is a hat. You choose how to wear it. That person yelling at you is that person yelling at you. The deadline is the deadline. How do you wear those? Your life won’t last forever. Wear it well.

This happens four times per year. I am late to watching the quarterly sumo tournament. It always creeps up on me. Then I am days behind, and I will mini-binge watch it, but never quite catching up to the current day. Because I want it to extend into the future. To go on forever with… Read more: Post Sumo Blues

The nautilus, the seed unfurling, a meditative shape. That’s one direction the spiral can go. The other is straight down to hell. One bad thought opens the door to a flood of other bad ones. A single thing becomes a million things. But the single thing can also lead to nothing. A spiral is a… Read more: Spiral

Is a life ever completely fulfilled without a side hustle, a crazy off program passion project? It’s not about the money, the fame, the accolades. It’s about the thing that floats out there just beyond reach, that bright shining light against the darkness that will swallow us all. Easy to hang in the shadows, and… Read more: Side Hustle

At a certain point in an athletic career, one has the option to pivot towards coaching. I’ve reached this level in my Brazilian jiu jitsu journey. I am more interested in coaching and helping others out than competing. This had made me think a lot about what it means to be a good coach. Some… Read more: Coaching

Not much of the traveler am I. Five continents. More countries and states than I can easily recall. Travel by Russian army truck, speedboats, Tuktuks, and airplanes that were so crowded that a passenger had to stand. All these places and experiences. But even so, to travel out of town for three days, and I… Read more: Away

Cooperation. Or competition. When we are working together towards something at what point are we no longer working together? Once there was a movement towards something. Maybe I am romanticizing it. Maybe it never existed. But once we fought towards a single thing. Together. Even with our differences. Now the space is crowded and no… Read more: The C word

You can either lift it or you can’t. Doesn’t matter how much you talk about it. Doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t like it. If you can lift it, you own it. Sure, people cheat a bit. Sliding the bar over the thighs or not dropping down low enough. Iron doesn’t give a shit about your… Read more: Iron does not lie

Is most of life just throwing stones against the waves? Why is it so hard for any of us to give up control? Especially over others? We know better. We have more experience. We’re not sure that the other person is doing the right thing of making the right choices. But, in the end, do… Read more: Control

A second, a minute, an hour, a year, a lifetime. Beginning and end. How do we exist within a measure of time? Whether a second or a life. That space between.

I remember the first time I competed in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. The moment I stepped onto that mat, I could not feel my legs. My opponent looked like he was standing at the far end of a tunnel. I’m not sure I could actually hear anything. A high level of stress and my body was… Read more: Vicarious Thrills

Because I deadlifted really heavy today. And then I did squats. And I accidentally added ten extra pounds of iron to the bar. Everything was heavier than it should have been. So my brain is in my legs. No blog post today.

Sometimes the water is leaking. And the pipes don’t fit together. So you gotta go a little crazy. Rage against the plumbing. The dark has to come out. Curse, swear, see red. It’s not who you are. But it is a part of you. Ugly, raging, angry. It’s there for a reason. Then it’s gone.… Read more: Rage Against the Plumbing

Is it fun anymore? Can this be the central organizing question for change and whether we stay on a path that we have traveled? On a surface level, the question appears flippant. Not everything in life is supposed to be fun. Within everything that we strive for, we accept that there are hills and valleys.… Read more: Enduring

You introduce an input into a function to get an output. If you want to change the output, you can either change the function or the input. In life, what should we change? The function or the input? In life, neither is particularly certain. Here I am. Here’s where I want to go. What do… Read more: Input Function Output

The key to getting the work done – and the work done well – is consistency. Showing up every day. Or every other day. But at what point does the “not quite every day” begin to erode to where it is no longer doing what it is supposed to. I am trying to blog every… Read more: Consistency

Call and response. The sound of me responding to the early morning alarm. Dreams interrupted. Darkness greeting me. The dog ready to go (only to be asleep again in half an hour). I love the productivity of mornings but not the whip of the alarm. I dread that time of the year when the days… Read more: Nooooo!

Fact is if you train long enough, or do anything long enough, including writing, you are going to have one of these days. More than likely you will have several of these days. At first, this day will appear like any other day really. Stretching and chatting with team mates before class, breezing through the… Read more: Belt Burning Day

Is it the world’s oldest story? Rags to riches… …to asshole. At what point does the dream shift from art to ego? Or a suitcase full of cash? Our culture has become one of celebrating the sell outs, those who posture and pose, those who swagger and swear, to reach the ultimate goal: the payout.… Read more: Dreaming Monsters

There’s this concept in exercise called Greasing the Groove. Let’s say you want to do 10 pull ups. But you can’t. How do you approach getting to that goal of 10 pull ups. One approach is the steady linear approach. Over time, you start with what you can say a set of 5 pull ups,… Read more: Greasing the Groove

Instead of spending my early mornings putting down a thousand words per day on a story, I am stuck on two words. Two damned words. The title of my upcoming fantasy book. Two words should be easy. Right? After all it’s only two freaking words. This is the third day in a row of combinations… Read more: Two Words

Website slow loading. Waiting on hold. But also, more importantly, a few words shared. Common ideas that bridge the divide between you and me. As artists, we are in our heads, our bodies forgotten, except when unwinding from tortured positions. But we can connect. Because even if our struggles are different, they are the same.… Read more: Connecting…

Between what we are and what we want to become. That is the essence of a meaningful life. But that is not where it stops. What matters is how we carry ourselves between here and there. Especially when failure and setback fills that space between.

Show up. Do the work. Don’t worry about the outcome. Love the process. Connect with others.

There’s a certain tension between comfort and fear. It’s there for a reason. After all, some of the online success profits are identifying a fear and then using that to get you to buy something that they are selling. They are selling the idea of freedom, or at least, opening with those cards. Is it… Read more: Tension

Missing the slap and pound of waves at night. The hiss of the wind through the palm fronds. The morning bird song. And the call of the gecko hunting in the night.

One of my favorite quotations is “Chaos is the law of nature; order, the dream of man,” by Henry Adams. As much as we try to hold things together, chaos will come in to claim its territory. This American Dream is descending into chaos. Maybe it was destined to, a false promise made to appease,… Read more: Chaos

Imagining slipping into another place is deceptive. Visiting is the easy thing. Swaying palm trees, the roll and pound of the surf, the beckoning song of the birds. But after that you begin thinking. Work, traffic, bills. Too many tourists. Graffiti. “Tip your slaves.” “Welcome to plastic Maui.” Still more rainbows here than at home,… Read more: Local Life

We need patterns. They allow us to make sense of chaos. They allow us to create pathways. By recognizing patterns we find efficiency. But a pattern can become a prison. A pattern created around an injury becomes a limp or a frozen shoulder or tight neck. A pattern to find ease in living works for… Read more: Patterns and Efficiency

What if all these selfies the kids are taking simply means they are smiling more than our generation did?

Staring at the sea, more blues than I have words to name. Endless seas of blues. The endless unnameable always there if we look.

Boredom has been given a bad rap. No distractions. No screens. No madly planned days. If your kid tells you that they are bored then you are on the right track. But don’t be tempted to give them something to fill up that space. You could give them problems to solve, or a task to… Read more: The power of boredom

When is a writing project ever done? What I thought was completed months ago had been edited, polished, and submitted it off to agents. Since then, I changed the ending of the story, further cleaned up the text, and added in a number of new scenes. Now it feels complete. But if I look at it in another two months, how will I want to change it?

Not a real medical condition. But one that arrives every time before I travel. What books should I bring? How many books? Am I bringing enough books?

Are we conditioned to be blind to the possibilities around us? Or is fearlessness the lie? Always easiest to back away from the precipice. But just because we fall does not mean that we cannot get back up. Fall seven, rise eight. What is known, the death, is the great unknown. Between here and there what do we do?

Twenty plus years of marriage. A teenage daughter. Creeping towards my black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Waking up early every day to write fiction. Or sometimes just stare at the blank page. Now testing Seth Godin’s idea of blogging daily. Sharing my thoughts. Always hardest to begin something new, and to commit to it,… Read more: Commitment

Read an excerpt from my new science fiction novel Alien Infestation and pick up your copy today. Abel was done with his watch shift and more than anything else just wanted to go down to his bunk, gulp down a shot or two of ship whiskey, maybe three or four, and get some sleep. He… Read more: Alien Infestation – Excerpt

Cover reveal for my upcoming alien invasion novel. Read the synopsis to get a sneak peek at the story.

In which I experiment with a method to write faster…

Looking for an inexpensive read? Check out these ten books or stories each for less than a dollar.

How this stubborn writer changed his mind about writing to market.

New dark science fiction adventure novel now available on Amazon.

I get drawn into the mysteries and conflicts in Richard Knaak’s urban fantasy novel, Black City Saint.

Check out this amazing promotion to get 50 free books to celebrate Halloween!

Check out the cover for my latest book, a science fiction novel, to be released in October 2016.

I dig into the opening of the Scourge of the Betrayer to find out how Jeff Salyards sets up this excellent dark fantasy adventure.

When you ask folks what are the best books for writers, odds are you someone’s going to mention Stephen King’s On Writing, but that modern classic doesn’t make my top three.

I look at the opening chapter of The Girl With All the Gifts to figure out what’s working.

Sometimes you should not brush the dust off an old story. You might be scared by what you find.

Ruminations on my cowardice, the quandary of marketing books, flim flam, and why you need to go out right now and buy a lottery ticket.

For years, I’ve wanted to be a better writer. But that’s not enough…

Writers sit for hours at the keyboard. But too much sitting is bad for your health. Here are some ideas for exercises to counter sitting all day.

Everything you are dying to know about fungus.

Check out four of the cool weapons I might add to my next fantasy series. What’s your favorite?

Fantasy literature is defined by trilogies. This was probably directly a result of Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings, a formative cornerstone of the genre. But I’ve been having a problem with trilogies I’ve been reading lately: nothing happens in the first book. Trilogies and Fantasy Tolkein’s famous series was never meant to be a… Read more: The Trouble with Trilogies

Advice in the indie writing industry is seductive. Don’t let it steer you away from a meaningful writing life.

Check out the cover for the soon to be released story The King Beneath the Waves.

Often a great story does not depend so much on the protagonist as much as it does on a fully fleshed out antagonist.

One of the places inspiring my work is at risk of vanishing…

All has been pretty quiet on the blog front recently. And while a number of you may be aware that I spent the holidays on the warm sands and in the warmer seas of Mexico, I have not just been relaxing since my last post. These past six weeks or so, I have been working… Read more: I swear I wasn’t just lying around the beach

It’s that time of the year already. The holiday shopping frenzy. Are you recovered from last year yet?

Check out these 3 recommended books I read this past year: sci fi, fantasy and horror.

Solid advice from Michael R. Fletcher, author of Beyond Redemption, on how to not only survive NaNoWriMo but to really get a novel finished and ready for publication.

As an indie author one of the challenges is finding images you can use. Here are five places to source images for your website.

Ideas have been milling around for my next fantasy series and they are beginning to take form: a Southeast Asian-inspired setting, a fungal magic system and a grimdark flavor. Come along for the ride.

I am excited to announce that my latest fantasy novel, Five Bloody Heads, is available for pre-order on Amazon.

You can now listen for free to my short story “The King Beneath the Waves” on the Far Fetched Fables podcast.

Beyond my interests in the practices of writing and studying Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, I am intrigued by the stages of learning. In this post I examine orientation – the first stage.

Hear me read the first chapter of Five Bloody Heads…as well as talk about writing and martial arts.

The first chapter from the new grimdark novel Five Bloody Heads. Coming Summer 2015.

Don’t be a fool like me. Back up your computer today before a catastrophic drive failure!

Check out the book cover and read a short description of Five Bloody Heads, the third novel in the Hounds of the North series.

Here are 12 things that you might not know about me but have contributed to my imagination and writing.

I am proud to announce that my flash fiction story “The Liar in the Cellar” was the 1st Runner Up in Mark Lawrence’s contest.

I’m proud to announce that my short story The King Beneath the Waves has been published in Grimdark Magazine. Get your grimdark on!

Here’s a sneak peak of some material from my book focusing on bringing authentic grappling and wrestling arts into fiction.

Collected advice on how to write fight scenes in books from Brandon Sanderson, Alex Brown and more.

When Everything goes Boom… Earlier this year, I hit one of those dead zones in writing. I was 30,000 words into the third book in my Hounds of the North series and everything just stopped. I had taken a few days off writing and when I returned to the computer, I had lost the story.… Read more: Writing Advice: Starting with Story Structure

This piece of fantasy flash fiction was inspired by the following painting posted in the Grimdark group on Facebook. Enjoy!

A lot of you may not know this but The Witch of the Sands, the first book in the Hounds of the North series, was actually written after Black River. In fact, I did not even start on The Witch of the Sands until two years after I began Black River and had a near… Read more: The Witch of the Sands: An Author’s Note

My writing was hitting a valley rather than a peak and I needed some writing advice. But from a martial arts training partner?

Writing advice on what to do when your novel suddenly falls apart halfway through. Because mine just has.