One of the issues, at hand, is that I have not worked on creative fiction (or uncreative fiction for that matter) in a few months. Alicia Grey is a priority (as are other projects) and yet, school and marriage are slightly higher priorities. In school I am playing catchup, something I seem to do more and more frequently the closer I get to graduation, and in marriage… well… Erin is pregnant and I am playing supportive husband (good thing this is more innate than breadwinner and student).

None of these are reasons not to update. I have a lot of ideas and plan to write about them. To voice those ideas and express opinions of what is happening with my writing. As such, I intend to do better and will try to update on Saturday’s until my schedule gets to the point where I am able to better keep up with this site and my fiction.

I am actually working through thoughts on voice when it comes to writing fiction and a couple of reviews. It always seemed weird to me when authors (or bloggers for that matter) would indicate they have several entries in process, but that they were holding off posting those entries. Me thinks that my hectic school, work, married, and other stuff life has dropped me into that category.

However, I am always thinking about this site and making plans. In fact, I got a copy of a CSS editor the other day and started to learn to use it so I could make even more cool changes to the site and move away from some of these templates that I have been using. Truth told, it would’ve been mahvelous when I was working Erin’s template attempt the other week.

None of that, though, has anything to do with updating the blog on writing. That is still my intent. I plan to explore the world of writing and some of the readings I am doing of late, book reviews, and etc.

So, with school and a change of jobs and other things happening in my life, I hope to make this site a much higher priority in the very near future.

Starting Monday the 7th I’ll be part of DC’s comic Zuda. (www.zuda.com) This is kind of like “American Idol” for comics. Each month DC picks 10 competitors and puts their work online for the public to judge and vote on. The winner at the end of each much receives a contract from DC to produce their comic for at least a year. The comic I wrote, Demons in the Closet, debuts on the site on the 7th. Demons, which is drawn by the very talented Amy Watson (from Texas), centers around a teen named Sky who one evening discovers that his sister’s closet is nexus to another dimension filled with powerful demons. Only Sky and his sister can open the closet, letting the demons in or out. Amasta, the demons beautiful leader, insists that she and her minions are just here to “help”. She also warns Sky that there are other demons and some humans who would stop at nothing to have control of the closet. It’s up to Sky to figure out who he can and can’t trust. So if you get a chance go to www.zuda.com and check out Demons in the Closet. (Registering and voting appreciated.)

You should go and view his comic. I liked it and it seems like I’ve come across the artist somewhere before, and vote for it. As Zakour writes, this is an American Idle-like competition where the winner gets a 12 month contract with DC comics (owned by Warner Brothers) to write and produce your comic book and get paid for it.

The point, go to the website, sign up, and vote for John Zakour and his partner.

What does this really have to do with writing?

We are visiting “What if…” so, what if the guy doing the peeping was a pillar of the community? What if this dude was actually someone that to the outside world was someone that was looked up to, admired?

Or, what if, instead of being a man, the peeping tom was a woman? Would we have to change the title? What would make her do what she was doing?

It occurred to me, sometime over the weekend, that you could take this and place almost anyone of any ethnicity or race or gender into the situation, into the role of the antagonist. The objective of story, the “What If,” is to find that interesting angle, be a people watcher, determine the reason why the person is doing the things he or she is doing, and then move forward with the story.

When it occurred to me that there was some potential for a story here, my mind leapt old pulp mystery (style) novels. I think, if I were to write this, I would start with something like:

“    Thomas Hayden was a pillar of the community. He’d lived in the same neighborhood, within a block of the house he’d grown up in, for almost forty years. When he married, he’d married his high school sweetheart, and they’d stayed in the area going to school at the local university where Thomas played on the football team. People said he would be recruited to play professional football, but that never happened and eventually people forgot that he was supposed to move away and make millions of dollars playing football for the Jets or the 49ers or the Cowboys. After ten or fifteen years, people forgot that Thomas was supposed to be the next Peyton Manning or Troy Aikman or Steve Young or even Joe Montana.
When I’d met Thomas Hayden I was as enamored of him as the rest of the community. When people talked about Thomas, they only had nice things to say. When something needed to be done, Thomas’s name was the first to come off of a person’s lips. People seemed to love Thomas and I have to admit, I started to love him right along with everyone else.“

This isn’t meant to be a perfect example of writing. I took it from an angle of start describing man, share my feelings about him, explore where the story takes me. I can see, in my head, elements to the story that might prove to be interesting, but the outcome is that I don’t know who Thomas Hayden is or where he comes from.

What I do know is that asking, “What if?” allows the writer to explore the everyday in a more-than-everyday.

With that said, I am hoping to create advice on writing, share my experiences, and hopefully come out on the other end (if there is another end) with a dynamic enough site that people find reasons to return again and again. Moreover, I think that this site, as a community, would be more dynamic by having multiple people adding and commenting about writing.