I’m already itching to start writing the next one. Yes. I said it. There will be a second book in this series — I said it, a series. I’m thinking five books to do it right. Plus maybe extra books on the side for some of the characters. Who knows, maybe ten when all is said and done. The more I research, the more potential I see.
Category: Publishing
Pulp non-fiction: the world’s first best-seller
In the 1590s, the newly independent Dutch Republic looked to flex its economic muscle, but stronger, more-established nations like Spain and Portugal stood in its way. Their ships blocked the way to wealthy trading ports in Asian nations. Besides, even without their interference, the trip to the Spice Islands (now known as Indonesia) took the better part of a year. What was desperately needed was a faster route to the wealth of Asia that bypassed the military threats of European rivals.
Enter Willem Barentsz.
Learn to love criticism
Learn to love criticism. The natural inclination can be to avoid it all costs, but that’s like avoiding going to the dentist: feels good now, but you set yourself up for decay down the road.
Gothic serendipity
An old friend and I simultaneously reached the same conclusion this weekend. What we’re both
working on are really gothic historical fiction novels, not historical fiction/supernatural/fantasy/grasp-at-any-comparable-you-can-find kind of books.
A confession
No one had to tell me how important the first page is. I got it already. I got it each time I picked up a book in a store, opened it up to the first page, read a paragraph and set it back on the shelf.
Platform, they said.
Something big happened a month ago.
At least, it was to me. I reached the end of a sentence. The sentence was the end of a chapter, and the chapter was the end of a first draft, and that was the first book I ever wrote. Getting there was no small feat. This was the culmination of five efforts of writing the dang thing. By this point, I had lived with the idea of the story in my head for nearly twelve years. It was kinda a big deal.
And also, kind of not.
Amsterdamned 