Re: The Old Invisible manuscript

I finished a novel called The Old Invisible a couple weeks ago. I can't tell what I think about it. I don't think it's bad. It's just that I wrote it fast. It took me about six months, maybe five. 

It's the longest book I've written (about 330 manuscript pages) and it's, of course, set in Eastern Kentucky, but it's not exactly the kind of regional literature of mine that's often tagged as Grit Lit. 

It's gritty because it's set in EKy, but there's a mountain witch and she's the main character. I like writing about witches. And sometimes other kinds of monsters. Horror writing brought me into the writing life (many thanks, Stephen King, from one of millions who can say the same exact thing) and that'll always be with me. I'm glad of it. Thing is, it sometimes leaves me unclear what my overall intentions are with a book I'm writing.

Then I remember it doesn't matter.

But there's still the matter of this finished novel I've got here in a folder on my Google Drive. 

Do I make another folder called "Trunk Novels" and put it in there? Do I call the folder "Shelved Novels" or something else? Why do I think about any of this?

I don't know why I think about it. I have a lot of folders in my Google Drive and all of them are about to my writing; folders for short stories, for novels, for prose poems, for essays, for notes, for outlines (very very recently began doing some outlining, since it happened organically in order to keep track of where the hell I was while writing my novel Oblivion Angels). There's others, all of those also about writing.

Off course.

So I don't know about The Old Invisible. I'm worried about sending it to Adam to have a look at. Adam Van Winkle is a publishing wizard. Founder of Cowbody Jamboree Press, he's published nearly all my books now in print, as well as tons of other books by solid as hell writers all around. When I send him a manuscript, I want to make sure it's worth his time to read.

I'm going to do something I've never tried before and that's put the manuscript aside and give it time to breathe, as they say, then go back and see what I think of it after a couple months. 

I'm bad at that kind of thing; impulsiveness has both worked in my favor and against my better interests. Against, me, though, far more often than not. So I'm going to give it a try. 

The time when I was almost kidnapped, raped, and probably killed.

Just told my sister about this childhood incident from when I six years old. It was published as fiction, but it's entirely autobiographical, except I told it from the POV of the predator.

Here is the link to "The Scout," published in 2021 at Schuylkill Valley Journal Online.

Three stories recently published

I've had a few stories published lately that I'm proud of and proud of where they were published. Below are the links to those stories, and the publication that put them out there. I'll also soon have a story appearing at BULL, sometime in November, I think.

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Harm May's Vegas Money - Porchlight

Flush - Grit Quarterly

The Dress - New World Writing Quarterly

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EARLY MORNING CLEO / July 29, '25 - 4:55 AM

So yeah I put the time on there because it's a ridiculous time of the day. 

But, also, I wanted to say, too, that my cat, my beautiful Cleopatra -

Woke me about an hour ago and wanted to cuddle. I cuddled, my friends. And now I'm awake and I've already written on my novel and short story last night, so I thought I'd stay sharp and hit the old blog a bit.

As I've said here, I think, I'm working on a novel called The Old Invisible right now. I'm 275 pages into the first draft (though I only ever put a book through more than two drafts, usually) and should be reaching the endish soon. 

I had planned for the book to likely come in around 600 pages, but it's wrapping up a lot sooner than I expected. I never know. I just write the sentences and they add up.

It has been the fastest draft I've written, though, by far. My other novels have taken an average of about five years each (I work on more than one at a time mostly). I started this one about four months ago.

I'm also working on several short stories right now. I love titles, so here's what they're called:

The Greenpoint Test

Return Ticket

Fallujah Boy

Dirt Worshippers

Writer friends have told me over the years I should talk more about my personal life instead of just talking about writing and reading all the time. Well, look up there at Cleo again :)

Truth is, I don't think about much else when I'm not at work (I'm Asst. News Director now, after spending many years as a reporter). But free time for me is reading and writing only. I cut the grass time to time, but that's about it. Oh, and go to the movies with my daughter. I explained this oddity to her like this, "I devote time to reading and writing at about the same level most other people devote to social media." It's true, I promise. I'm scared of social media.

I did have to delete YouTube from my phone, though. I did it after sitting on the porch for six hours without realizing I'd been there watching YouTube videos. Six hours gone. Poof. It felt like half an hour.

But that's not what scares me about social media. I can't say what scares me, what pushed me away from it forever, but trust me, it would you, too.

That's it. 

I have a new short story about kissing at Poverty House today

I have a new short, "Revelation Kiss," up at Poverty House. 

I wrote it a couple of days ago after seeing this strange photo. 

I wanted to share the photo with the story but was afraid to because of copyright and general paranoia about anything having to do with an online social presence.

Hope you read it! 

Revelation Kiss at Poverty House

House of Leaves, and, right at the end, fathers

Hi. I've been writing a lot. Got 226 first draft pages of my new novel The Old Invisible finished since February. Started it, half-heartedly, late last year. Used it for the first three months while composing as a place to be safe; used it this last month not at all. Only wrote on it.

I also have a new short story collection finished called Story of My Stories and Other Stories. I'm adding to that one as I go. I'll know when it has enough stories in it. Or maybe not. My past collections were sent to my publisher when I'd written enough to constitute a book-length work. With that as a measuring stick, I would have submitted this to them a month ago. So I don't know what I'm doing with it. All I'm sure of is the stories are coming fast. Even with my output on TOI I've still written seven new long stories and three shorter stories. This has been in the last two months. 

I guess I rarely have prodigious output (not that this is prodigious on the full scale, only in relation to what I usually write..you know what I'm saying).

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But my writing isn't what I stopped by here at the old house to talk about, actually.

I was enrolled as an English major at Eastern Kentucky University in 1997. One of my English classes (I cannot at all remember which one no matter how hard I try) assigned us some books to pick up at the college bookstore. One was Watchmen by Alan Moore. Another was House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. My sister-in-law at that time knew more about hot books than I did. I was still reading Hemingway and Stephen King and nothing else. So she asked if she could have them when my wife at that time left me and moved back home to the hills. I gave them to her. And found later that both were major books.

I later read Watchmen, borrowed it from a friend, but have not yet read House of Leaves. Tonight I ordered it and will see what I can manage with it. I glanced through it back then and thought of it as, I don't know what, really, a really long, involved literary parlor trick? I'm going to try to actually read it this time and see how it goes. If I finish it, I'll add the designation "personal mountain top" to it on my Reading Log here.

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That's all. Happy Father's Day to you dads who are being good dads. To hell and all its dark fire to those of you dads who are doing anything other than that.

Still struggling with social media

I was the victim of people on social media in 2015. They called me things I'm not, terrible things that actually contradicted my actions as recently as a month before this began. I can't say anything else because I'm afraid something will happen to me again. I wouldn't be able to get through it again.

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I don't bring this up in search of pity or anything of that nature. I bring it up so I can explain to my writing friends why I'm no longer active on social media. It scares me, plain and simple. It's just something I wanted my friends to understand. 

Love you all.