Hurt my neck...

Got a cramp in my neck and pulled a muscle.

I'd love to say I did it while setting a PR lifting weights or something. But instead it happened while I was sitting down reading and I yawned too hard.

Getting old is bullshit.

The death of my father (a different perspective)

In sending a condolence message to a rather old friend regarding the loss of her father, I had an epiphany.

My dad is half of my genetic makeup. He is also half of my brother Jon's.

My father died Dec 16, 2014 but between the two of us, he still lives, very nearly entirely, through my brother and I. Nearly all of his DNA lives on in us.

I wish I could use it to talk to him.

If my math is right, he's still 2/3 alive and therefore he's bawling his eyes out with me right now.

My books... available on Amazon and the Kindle.

They're available on the Kindle App as well. :-)


"Black's Voyage"

"A Pair of Black"

"Red in Tooth and Claw"

"Black and Blue"

Coming soon:

   "Isis Rising"

   "Blackest Revenge"

An unrelated book to the series but the longest I've ever written:

   "Vintage Wrath" a book of revenge and justice in the rarefied world of the Port wine industry.

The death of a character...

I've been editing a scene that involves the death of someone who deeply loved his wife.
The man had to bury her before the plague finished with him. He left a note asking whoever came after him to bury his remains next to his wife's.

So they could be together forever.

I've been dehydrating myself via my eyes for over an hour.

I don't remember it being this sad when I wrote it but I've become a master at writing sad scenes with my eyes closed.

You don't need to see to write.

I have no way of knowing if it'll affect anyone else like this but it's tearing me to pieces.

The book is called, "Blackest Revenge" and is book 6 in the series. It'll be published around Labor Day.

How to write a novel.

I start at the last line of the book.

You have to tear your heart out, every inch of the way, back to the beginning.

When you can't take any more... Not another moment...

You're halfway there.

I don't know how I feel about who I am sometimes. What kind of person poisons three people and kills an old, honorable, hard-working man before he goes to work in the morning?

How do I look myself in the eye, knowing I am planning the deaths of several characters who are wonderful people? They don't deserve to die but they must in order for the story to move forward.

I can write with my eyes closed so I don't need to be able to see through the tears in order to kill a beloved person. I can kill them with my eyes closed.

I can tell you. If my story makes you cry... I promise I cried harder as I broke my spine and removed my heart to let you feel some of what I felt as that person died. I felt it more than the reader and for the reader it was brutal.

I hope it was anyway because that's how I meant to write it.

My abusive relationship...

It's time to confess my shame, swallow my pride and come clean... for many years I've been in a long-term abusive relationship.

With spicy food.

I love it so much but it hates me with a vengeance which seems to know no bounds. I burn my mouth with the heat of a thousand suns and even while sweating and gasping... come back for more.

I step away for a moment and almost immediately my co-dependent need for the pain, only she can provide, pulls me back for additional abuse.

I beg for mercy and plead for deliverance while in my heart I know... neither of us wants it to stop.

Although my tongue feels as though it's rejecting my electrocuted taste buds as though they were a badly transplanted organ out of some Southeast Asian innard-market, my fork returns to the bowl of Creole-seasoning-with-red-curry-over-steak-and-chicken-with-mushrooms-and-onions.

Again and again I chew the painful but succulently prepared meat and my mouth burns away my hours of torture, without end.

Why do I do this to myself? Endorphins? Some solo-macho need to prove myself to... myself? I'm home alone so that's probably not it.

Alcohol brings bravery and a tiny respite from the searing agony in my mouth as my sweaty breathing begins to sound like I'm coaching a La Maze class.

I know I'll sleep well since the pain will fade by nightfall, leaving me tired and exhilarated from my ordeal.

Sometimes the pain launches a counter-attack the next morning but it is a mere echo of the previous night's marathon of feverish discomfort.

The pain doesn't forget. The pain remembers! It wants me to pay for my peaceful night's slumber and suffer anew while I welcome its fresh embrace.