There’s this giant elephant in the room, dark gray like a storm cloud that we’re all afraid to look at. It’s there and no, I’m not talking about the Coronavirus that has us all locked down on “voluntary” house arrest. I’m talking about the fear. The fear of an enemy none of us can see, that none of us can fight. We talk of this disease, we send warnings, we beg people to do their part to “flatten the curve” and stay the F%CK at home. But we don’t always talk about the fear we are all living in from day to day. Not the fear that we might die, that those we love might die. Not the fear of where we’re going to come up with rent money, food money. Hell, not even that strange and random fear some people have that they will run out of toilet paper. I’m talking about the fear of what happens next. The one thing we’re all afraid to admit: that we’ll never go back to normal. The fear that EVERYTHING has changed.

It has.

We want to go back to the way things were, want to visit our favorite restaurant again, want to not be afraid of strangers on the street. We want to go back to normal. But our normal is gone. Nothing will EVER be as it was. This is changing EVERYTHING. And it should. We’ve lived too long ignoring our connection to each other, our connection to this planet. We can’t deny that anymore. All of us, everything human on this planet, is connected through this single fear. We aren’t alone in this and we aren’t alone in facing what’s coming next. We’ve seen some amazing things these past few weeks. We’ve seen heroes and we’ve seen some really disgusting lows in human behavior. More we’ve all been faced with our mortality, with how fragile our lives and society really are. Do you really think you can just go back to work, back to life as if nothing happened? All of us are being affected by this, all of us are being CHANGED by this. It’s my hope that it’s a change for the better.

I don’t know how it’s going to change. I can’t see the future, but one thing I know is our government is going to change, our laws, how we handle crisis, is going to change. Financially many of us will be crippled, but more as a nation we’ve been irrevocably affected and we’re all going to feel it. Nothing is ever going back to normal and I just want to tell you: That’s ok. It’s called evolution. It’s what has kept us as a species from dying out a long time ago. Growth, change, hurts. But it’s ok. Because we’re not in this alone.

Normal has changed, but so have we.

Stay safe and sane and know: It’s going to be ok.

I’m tired of being ruled by fear. The fear of failing. The fear of dying. The fear of not having enough money. The fear I won’t be able to pay next month’s rent. The fear of what happens next with the world in chaos all around me. The fear I’ll always be fat. The fear that I’ll always be alone. The fear of…EVERYTHING.

We live in a world filled by fear. Fear stimulated by ignorance, by an overwhelming belief that we are helpless. We feel immobile and impotent, unable to chance anything in our lives. We feel trapped. We are a nation of traumatized children scared we will never escape an abusive parent. Our fear is fed by the media and by our community online that thrives on sensationalism. Instead of sending hope and encouragement we spread more fear. And panic like a disease runs through us, showing the next generation there is no hope, no chance for escape or redemption.

I’m so tired of being afraid. I was raised fearing the Rapture, the end of days and the return of God. I was raised fearing everything because it might have been a sin. I made me afraid of my own sexuality, of other cultures and religions. My mom was a woman who lived in fear and she passed that on to us. She cloistered us close and taught us to fear the outside world, a world filled with sin and scary people. People who would mock and judge or worse lead me into sin and finally into Hell.

I’m so tired of being afraid.

It surrounds me on all sides, a gray and looming monster who whispers lies so I cannot see the truth, I can’t see past the dark to how I can move forward, to how I am SAFE right now.

The world is polluted, but we can fix it if we try. Maybe not completely, but enough for it to heal itself with time and love. There are diseases, poverty, war…but we can stop those too. If we stop listening to the lies of fear, if we pull together and take one tiny step at a time, make one positive change each day, we can chance the world. We can improve our lives. We can defeat the monster that is fear.

We can stop fear.

I’m so tired of being afraid.

So I’m going to stop feeding the monster. I’m going to stop being afraid.

The other day on Twitter I read a post about World Building. The question posed was how much is too much? Sometimes it feels that the heart of the story is overwhelmed by historical treatises and minutiae that doesn’t push the narrative forward. Sometimes you want the adventure and not a lengthy discussion of the various shades of green that make up the forest (Yes, I’m referencing the lengthy forest descriptions Tolkien inserted into the Lord of the Rings. One of my favorite stories, however there were pages I simply had to skip because it was just TOO much world building). The most fascinating world building are the hints that make the reader go, ‘ooo, I’d like to learn more’ or that make them feel there is depth and backstory, not necessarily and political and financial history of the world in which they live. Sure, that’s great you did a ton of research to your world and you have everything from legal system to folklore and pre-history of your world detailed, but readers don’t need to know the whole justice system and the history of how they were enacted unless it pushes the narrative forward. I’ve taken Social Sciences and sat through lectures on the structure of the US’s government and it WASN’T fascinating. It was learning. Yes, knowledge is great, but you’re not writing non-fiction, you’re writing fantasy, you’re offering escape.

I do a ton of world building for the ShadowGate series. Why? Because it’s fun and more importantly it is crucial for the WRITER The more in depth our knowledge of the world we are creating the more realism we can translate to the page for the reader. I spend hours working out the details but it’s for MY benefit more than it is for the readers. The reader will never know all the details, they will never know the exact Guardian Angel to Charge ratio that I spent four hours figuring out. They will however understand that a Guardian has the ability to be in multiple locations at once. That is a fun fact that will fascinate them, but they don’t need to know the whole process of how I came to that conclusion. The reader will only ever know the very edges of the research, history and backstory that I do. And that’s ok, why? Because sometimes too much revealed to the reader destroys the flow of the story.

I know we’re proud of the detailed histories, pre-histories, psychological profiles, etc. that we create. But don’t try to fit all of that into the story in lieu of a STORY. If you’re proud of your world and the detailed notes you’ve made on it, publish those later for the fans of your world who want a deeper look.

Do the research, but dole it out sparingly. Don’t let the world overshadow the story.

Ok, rant over until next time!

L

Angel’s Gate is only months away from being released launching the ShadowGate Series. And yes, I can say series as I’ve already finished two of the consecutive books and as of Monday started on Book 4 of the series, Sanctuary. It’s really hard not to gush right now and tell you everything about ALL of the stories I’ve written so far. But I can’t spoil all your fun.  Unfortunately you’re going to have to wait until October to read the first installment. It is my hope that when you reach “The End” of Angel’s Gate you’ll be as excited as I am for the next book.

Guardian Angel was written in 2017 during a very rough period in my life and is really the birth of the series. True, I’ve told you the roots of the series started many, MANY, years ago, but Guardian Angel was where I knew it was moving into something really special. I wrote the first draft in a little over a month and for the longest time thought it was lightning in a bottle, something I would never be able to replicate ever again.  That same year I started working on what would lead to the final version of Angel’s Gate, almost 2 full years of edits and polishing until I felt it was perfect and ready for all of you to read. Though I was pretty confident in the content of Angel’s Gate and Guardian Angel I was beginning to fear I wouldn’t be able to continue the story with the next book. What if it was a fluke and something that just wasn’t meant to happen? What if I wasn’t good enough to bring into reality the idea I had? What if this was too big for me?

Then in October 2019 I started Angel Child. It started with a down and dirty hate (you fill in the blank) and just took off. There was no holding it back. Within 3 months the first draft was done and I knew this was it, the ShadowGate Series was in fact, reality. No longer did I doubt that I would be able to put this world, this HUGE story down in print. Now it was just a matter of writing the next story and the next. When I wrote “The End” on Angel Child I expected I would need a few months to reconnect, to find the next story, to find the next words that were dying to be written. It took less than a month before I had fully plotted out Sanctuary (a 12hr session behind the keyboard) and the first words hit the screen. Monday I wrote the first chapter and it feels ‘write’. This is the next story I need to tell, because this is the SAME story, it’s just the next chapter.

I’ve been dying to start this one, since this summer I’ve been getting to know the characters, letting them come to life so that I understand them and I can’t wait to bring them to life.

I can’t wait to share this world with you and I hope you’re as excited about it as I am.

Until next time,

L

After almost three years rewriting, editing and fine tuning ‘Angel’s Gate’ I’m done. Ok, done is a subjective term when you are a writing and the release date for the book is still a few months out. But I’m done with the BIG changes. Now any changes I make would be grammatical or formatting changes. I’ve set an official release date and ‘Angel’s Gate’ is currently available for pre-order (Reserve your copy here).

On October 31, 2020 it will be released digitally for the whole world to read, officially launching the ShadowGate series. ‘Angel’s Gate’ is the very first in the series and came into being in 2012 during a very dark place in my life. I wrote the original draft in 30 days for the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) November challenge and didn’t really think much would come out of it. It was an interesting story, kind of took on a life of its own, yet when I typed the end on November 30, 2012 I thought that would be the last I would see of it. Oh, sure I had the vague belief that one day I’d go back and edit it, but that’s the belief I tell myself after EVERY book I write (even the bad ones). Still I set it aside and went on with my life, never realizing it would play such a big part in my future.

I never realized how big the seeds were that it planted inside of my mind. Five years later those seeds would sprout and the world of the ShadowGate was born in only a few months. A complex story that will span a series of books to tell. It was huge, it was big, and it all started with a NaNoWriMo challenge and a small idea of angels here on earth. Of course that meant that I had to go back into ‘Angel’s Gate’ and replot, rewrite and rework a 50K word story that had only an inkling of the world it had unlocked. In 2017 I began the 2nd draft which turned into an almost complete rewrite. In late 2018 I finished the rewrite taking on an additional 100K words. Which meant the rest of 2018, ALL of 2019 and the first two weeks of 2020 were spent on the 3rd draft where I murdered ALL my darlings and a 4th draft that smoothed out everything my 3rd draft did.

Now it’s done and there’s nothing left for me to do but the really hard part. MARKETING. Which all begins with the perfect cover. A cover currently in conception and creation with MOTTWRK a fantastic local artist. Once the artwork is in place you’re going to be hearing a LOT of marketing pushing you (BEGGING you) to purchase ‘Angel’s Gate’ starting October 31, 2020.

I’m very excited and I’m really scared. There’s so much happening in my world and for the first time I’ll be sending this story out into the world. Everything hinges on ‘Angel’s Gate’ , it’s the welcome ambassador for the entire world of The ShadowGate.

I can’t wait for you to read it.

Until next time,

L

Very early in the book I read a sentence that gripped my heart, “My sons may yet experience what Bill McKibben has called ‘the end of nature,’ the final sadness of a world where there is no escaping man.” (Louv 26).  It made me sad for the generations that are to follow.  It made me think back to my childhood, to playing in the hot summer sun with my brother and sisters, running barefoot through the grass while sprinklers sprayed us with crystalline drops.  Those memories, those days spent under the sun and sky, getting dirt under my nails, climbing trees, digging holes in the back yard, those were some of the most treasured of my life.  To imagine a world where children don’t do those things, they don’t dig for night crawlers to go fishing or pick sour grass to chew on or clovers to braid into headpieces, would be a dark nightmare. 

I have seen the shift that the author talks about.  I have seen it not in my own children, for I do not have any, but in the lives of my sisters children and my brothers children.  I tried to share my wonder and passion for nature with my niece when she was little, and there were times, when she was seven or eight, where she embraced our walks in nature, in feeding horses at a local ranch and picking wildflowers as they grew along the trails.  But slowly that faded away as she became enamored with her new cell phone, her MP3 player, then her iPod and now her iPhone.  She spends her free time on the couch watching reality TV, on social networks or hanging out with her friends.  She is an intelligent young woman, is socially minded and is driven to join in defending the environment.  She is a huge advocate of “going green”, and would rather we all sit in the dark than waste electricity.  She recycles, buys organic foods and stands up for her beliefs.  But she has no connection to nature.  She knows she needs to do something, she sees the world is at risk, but she doesn’t know what she is fighting for.  She knows she is missing something, why else would she be driven to be a good steward to this world.  But she has found “the end of nature” even though she fights to save it.  She hasn’t walked through the world she wants to save, neither have her friends who also fight to “save the planet”.  They want to make a difference, but they don’t even realize what they are fighting for. 

When I step out into nature, beneath the red woods at Muir Woods, along the shores of the California Coast or into the trees in the Sierras I feel I have come home to a long lost friend.  To think that my niece will never experience that, that she never had a chance to swim in a river or lake, hike the shores and collect shells.  That she may never do those things makes me grieve for her and her generation.  How can they be a part of a world they no longer know?  How can they save a world they are strangers in?  It’s not all about the “cause” or raising awareness.  It’s about experiencing and being a part of the ecosystem they are trying to save.  They may save the world and prolong the human race, but trees and plants and animals will only be pretty things on the TV or their computer screen.