Something New

Writing about writing

So what have I been working on?

Primarily; Wolfmen Investigations #2.

It’s been an interesting journey. I can do a lot of talking about how I can do the ass kicking work of just cranking out writing but I just don’t have the same momentum that I’d carried through the more mentally unencumbered months of 2025. 2026 is shaping up to be a humdinger in terms of world history, so my mind is often caught up in thinking about that, not to mention work, but I digress.

The A. plot of the thing is tied up a lot in personal reckonings I’m working on and rather than try to force that I decided to pick up in the middle of the story and work on a section that I know must happen to satisfy the story, but that I can write independently of the rest of the novel. It has been very satisfying, creatively and mentally, to go explore the background of a character that I guess I’d just set up to be a one-dimensional joke at first, but then upon scratching a little bit on the surface discovered an entire life and history of adventures that were well worth exploring. A sense of discovery took over and I was soon thrilled to know that this character had a lot more utility than I’d initially thought. Characters surprise you like that sometimes and end up charming themselves into a bigger role in the story.

The whole thing has also been a reminder that writing something, especially a bigger project like this, is a process. It’s not something you nail in one go, and despite having thought about this story for years it can still be quite the process actually writing the words that get you from point A to Z. I try to remember that this first draft is building the scaffolding upon which to adorn with greater detail later. If the structure is strong enough, I can always make it better. Sometimes it’s not about having the right line at that exact moment but to go back and craft this misshapen piece of steel I’ve been hammering at into something that more generally resembles a real thing. I dunno this is just how I do it. It’s not like writing this where if I make a mistake in grammar or spelling I just brush past it. Obviously.

It’s a big part of why I decided to try to write shorter stories or to keep them more compact. I simply didn’t want to have some unwieldy 400-page behemoth to force myself to revise. As such a lot of my fiction writing has become increasingly compact and moving at an intense pace. Maybe it’s just an evolution of style and understanding of story mechanics. The first Bartender novel, all of them really, are told mostly linearly through the POV of the main character, and it is often an extended unbroken narrative. I thought that I literally had to describe exactly what happened the entire way along and these days I’m much more comfortable with yelling Cut! and moving on to the next scene.

I’m attempting to plan the whole thing out in chunks or sections, or books themselves. Something I experimented with in the 3rd Bartender book was using the head note title banners and subtle shifts in font and typesetting to intercut different stories; flashbacks, asides, dream sequences, as if they were their own book. It’s an approach I’m taking here with each section essentially being its own pulp novel, and that if you were to break it all up you’d be buying 3-4 separate books for each Volume of what I’m working on. In this way the whole becomes a much bigger thing. Wolfmen Investigations: Thrashin’ is like the pilot episode where I introduce all the major characters, themes and general premise of the story and throughout the rest of what I’m working on now it all unfolds.

I like lots of different genres and that’s part of being able to separate this into different sections or books within the book. Say the A. plotline is going to be more of a southern gothic tale that takes place in a pacific northwest set story that will have a lot more of the flourishes of rural horror and folksiness that one might more typically find in Appalachia. The beauty of a fictional world is you can mish mash things that wouldn’t make sense in the real world. It can become a pastiche of different things applied in new ways. The B. plot, or at least the one I’m working on right now is an odd couple setup in an urban turf war scenario, with what I’m feeling like is a Tony Scott (True Romance, Top Gun, Man on Fire) vibe to it. I often find myself drawn to intense and violent subject matter and while in many cases, I’m more than happy to get into the gory details, here I find myself sanding off some of the edges to make it all a little more palatable, and to keep things moving rather than getting hung up on the seasoning. Perhaps it is an economy of words thing too; at this point I think I know when less is more. Ultimately, I think I’m more interested in the story itself than slaving over lavish prose. Of course, that type of detail, as I mentioned only comes with a second, third, fourth pass. Oh, to have all the time in the world.

Then every now and then you’re hit sideways with something that blows open the wall. I was recommended the book The Fort Bragg Cartel, by a podcast and it lit a fire in my brain. It details how the US Special Forces; Delta Force, The SEALS run under JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command), is less an honorable fraternity of warriors and more like if everyone in the Wolf of Wall Street was a trained killer. I’ve always liked that shit. Military hoo-rah, badass special operative stuff. I’ve also known that those people are likely some of the worst people in the world, conditioned through trauma to be without empathy, ruthless killing machines. This book nails down how deeply corrupt, misogynistic, nihilist and often suicidal these guys are as they’re hooked on adrenaline, drugs and the power of getting to live outside of accountability. It metamorphosized one of my plotlines about crooked police into a bigger tale of corruption worldwide. It didn’t exactly make me feel good about the idea that anyone in the military is going to stand up to Trump, he loves and endorses all their psycho stuff, but it sure makes for good story fodder. I highly recommend it!

Ok that should about wrap this up. I just needed to barf up some words and thoughts rather than sitting and pondering what the next steps for this story is going to be. It’s such a thing to have an idea and then need to sit there pondering, cultivating it until it’s what you want it to be.

Oh, and I designed and order a completely ostentatious customized baseball/letterman jacket. My long-term “Mallardville Merchants” jacket is pretty beat up and it was gonna cost a pretty penny to repair it so I figured I’d splurge on something I plan on having until I die.

Axe Out.