As the homepage says, The Southern Invasion is now live. I’ve added a sample chapter from the book, FOUND HERE or through the Sample Chapters page. The selection comes from part 2 of the book, in which Tomas and the others have once more taken ship, and are sailing across the Hiltia Sea in pursuit of Fak’Har. Their ship comes under attack from the cursed spirits trapped within that sea. This chapter not only has actions, but quite a bit of character development. You learn more about Xaemus, and Sarah, but you also get a continuance of Tomas and Sarah’s increasingly-complicated relationship. Additonally, you learn more of the history of the world before the Uldra Uprising. In the final years of the Sylvai Empire, there was the Disaster at Nassinalia, when their greatest city was destroyed. Worse, the resulting cataclysm caused a lot of other problems, including wiping out and cursing an entire inhabited valley that, we learn, was flooded, forming the Hiltia Sea. These kinds of chapters are a lot of fun to write, as you not only get to talk about the great action/adventure of high fantasy, but you also get to share just a little more about this world that I’ve spent more than twenty years building. Always nice.
All of that said, I am frikkin’ exhausted. July was not an easy month. Getting a book released is never an easy time, but this one was especially tough. Certain national and international events have made commerce increasingly difficult. There’s been a marked reduction in Canadian vacationers this year, reducing customers at the shows I attend in the summer. Supply chains have been heavily disrupted, causing delays in everything from posters and other promotional material, to even paper for book printing. For the past three weeks, I’ve been scraping by with just a dozen or so of each title at the shows. Twice I’ve run out. I just can’t get a substantial resupply while all this chaos is going on. I hope I’ll have Southern Invasions in the next two weeks, but honestly, I’m not holding my breath.
This is a good lesson for my fellow creatives. Life and the world will throw obstacles at you. America, historically, has been pretty brutal to its creatives. A lot of us die in abject poverty, often of mysterious/bizarre/hilarious/tragic circumstances. Google sometime the deaths of Edgar Allen Poe, who was found face-down in a Baltimore gutter wearing someone else’s clothes; Tennessee Williams, who apparently choked to death on an eye-drop cap; Mark Twain, who was born and died the day Haley’s Comet arrived; Earnest Hemmingway, who suffered from depression and alcoholism most of his life and finally committed suicide; Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of F. Scott, who spent the last years of her life in a metal institution. Both John Toole and Anne Sexton committed suicide; Jackson Pollock suffered from crippling alcoholism before dying in a car crash; Buddy Holly, Tirchie Valens, and JP Richardson all died in that plane crash; Marvin Gaye was shot by his own father; the three Bronte sisters died within 6 years of each other; Jack London was an alcoholic. Etc, etc, etc. As an American creative, you really have to want it. You really have to work hard, and be prepared for constant setbacks.
Most importantly, and this is something no Fine Arts teacher will talk about, but we all deal with: creatives are at constant psychological risk. Being a creative means diving into the darkest places of your soul. Trauma, fear, hatred: these are the fuel for poetry and storytelling. Creatives don’t visit the softer sides of life; we don’t think about love, fear, or anger. We deliberately explore lust, terror, and rage. We dredge up abandonment, isolation, ennui, dependance, and misery. Our stories, our art, our music, our souls themselves are exposed to the world, and the world likes to kick our hearts right in the butt. Dedicating your life to being a creative is not an easy rode, nor one I often recommend. Good stories, the ones that stay with you, are the ones that allow the ready to experience what the Ancient Greeks called catharsis. They get to vicariously feel the fear and doubt, the hate and uncertainty, safely, without undo risk to their hearts and minds.
But, guess what? For the reader to get that catharsis, they need somebody to feel those dark feelings, to experience them and live through them. That’s us, that’s the role of the creative. We’re the sacrificial lambs, allowing the wider population to say, “oh, my gosh, how terrible.” And then move on with their lives.
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Jesus, I’m really depressing myself. I guess that’s a good headspace to continue writing this new sci-fi horror story. I’m really plugging away at it, and hope to have it out relatively quickly (life allowing, of course).
This weekend, I’ll be in Milford, at the Hampshire Dome, for the Southern Food Truck Festival. This’ll be the third year I’ve done this show. They’ve got fancy tater tots, artisanal pizza, bbq, cannoli, gelato, asian, pretzels, and a bunch of other good treats. The food trucks are out in the parking lot, and then inside the dome itself are a bunch of vendors and a psychologically-scarred writer (the poor bastard). They’re also doing characters for photo ops, including Woody and Buzz Lightyear, Disney Princesses, and a few others.
Next weekend, I’ll be back in Wolfboro at the Brewster Academy. See y’all there.
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