Tag Archive: Journal


**** “The Vampyre Blogs – Private Edition” Just Passed the 10,000 View Mark ****

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December 5, 2016

For those of you who didn’t know, I run another blog called “The Vampyre Blogs – Private Edition” which just passed the 10,000 view mark! 

Here’s the link for anyone who’d like to check it out:  http://thevampyreblogs.blogspot.com/

I started this blog with the sole purpose of introducing the idea of a science-fiction vampyre who was truly similiar to the traditional vampires of lore. Nathan tries to avoid sunlight (although he can step out on cloudy and rainy days, and can actually walk in the light but only if he’s loaded up on blood in advance since sunlight can dry him out to the point of becoming dust). He sleeps in the ground (because certain nutrients his body needs can only be absorbed from there). And he can shape-shift becoming a horde of rats, bats, dogs, mist, grow wings… but is restricted to how big he can do these things. He cannot make more than what there is of his physical being (law of mass). And of course, he is extremely long-lived.

The blog has been chronicling short stories about his long life and some of the people he has met over the last 150 years such as Mae West

the Marx Brothers,


 

Silent film stars like Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Buster Keaton

Ballroom dancer turned heart-throb Rudolph Valentino

And many others he worked with in Vaudeville before they became movie stars, along with others whose lives he’s touched such as victims of the Nazi Holocaust and simple everyday people. There are also entries from the supporting cast who allow you to see Nathan through their eyes. Their stories show many sides to him and why he has come to be a guardian angel who has watched over not only them but in some cases their parents, grandparents.

To date there are over 41 short and somewhat longer stories on the blog, with many more to come. I plan on bundling some of the stories next Christmas as an anthology, since there are so many entries on the blog for people to wade through these days.




In the meantime, please share the blog link with everyone you know and then help them to check out Nathan’s first full-length novel story “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home” where he comes back to his hometown Pointer, West Virginia. He has come back many times but this time its to stay to save the manor he called home from the wrecking ball, as well as the 1000 acres of pristine land which would fall prey to ruthless lumber companies and coal mining corporations.

Its a lonely homecoming, as far as he knows, but someone has been waiting for him to come back. Someone who saw him leave to fight in the Civil War back in 1862 and a year later died in his arms shortly after his transformation which occurred in a Para-Earth where he encountered two strange lifeforms. One which kept him alive, while the other wanted him destroyed… and still does. In fact, the latter has found its way into this reality and is now closing in on Pointer to finish him off once and for all for he’s the only force that can keep it from absorbing all the dead in this world, even if it has to make more people dead to complete the job.

You can find the novel both in e-book and trade paperback form at Amazon, Barnes and Noble:

Amazon:

Barnes and Noble:

For Apple and Kobo readers use Smashwords:

Thanks again and stay tuned for more short stories to be posted soon, including some new holiday tales involving Nathan and his extended family. Until then, keep reading and writing my friends.

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Thoughts On Using The 1st Person Voice In Stories…

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May 1, 2013

Well, a new month has begun and here I am already doing another entry about writing.  This is what happens when the muse takes hold and has something to say.  I hope you all enjoy today’s installment.

Yesterday, against my better judgement, I started writing a second book.  Mind you  I’m still working on “The Ship” which is the sequel to my first novel “The Bridge”.  But I was having troubles with “The Ship”.  I was making progress, but it was so slow I was going crazy at times.  I would write over a 1000 words in one day and then dump about half of them because they weren’t moving the plot along or really helping develop the characters as much.  I kept what did seem to be working and built on that the next day.  Sometimes this is one way of dealing with Writer’s Block for me.

Then yesterday, something else happened.  An idea for a different book that is part of my Para-Earth series started gelling like no one’s business.  It had sat on the back-burner for so long now it was boiling over.  Scenes and characters started coming to life to such an extent I had only one of three options:

A) Start writing the book

B) Leave it alone and hope I don’t forget all this great stuff that was coming up

C) Start taking notes and outlining the damn thing for later.

I tried opting for C but next thing I knew I had written the opening scene of the book and was plunging forward with the project.  Tentatively I’m calling it “The Vampire Blogs”.  And as a homage to Bram Stoker who gave us “Dracula” I’m doing it as a series of journal and blog entries.  I’m choosing this route because I knew I wanted to do the entire book in the 1st person perspective.  Now most 1st person narratives stick with just one character throughout the entire story. This is a great device for a mystery or thriller because the audience can only know as much as the main character.  So when he/she gets surprised by something they didn’t know, so are we.

However, I knew from the start I’d need to be showing the audience what was going on in several different people’s heads while using the 1st person voice.  So how was I going to pull that off without confusing the hell out of my readers?  I turned to my “Spare Brain”, my wife Helen who is more well read than me, and asked for advice.  She told me that from what she could recall it had been done before but that it could be tricky.  Then she struck on the idea of paying homage to Mr. Stoker and instead of just letters and journals, use blogs and journals on the internet since I was using a modern day setting.  This was a masterstroke on her part.  I now had a clear path of how to switch heads and keep the “I” voice without confusing the audience.  The other thing I loved was the fact that I could build more suspense by letting the audience know things that only some of the characters were aware of.  Nothing gets an audience going like seeing some of what’s coming and realizing the characters don’t have a clue about it yet.  Plus you can still surprise your audience at times because they don’t necessarily know everything about the characters or the situation.  They know only what your characters have shared with them so far.

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