The Middle of the Dark

Following a recent trend, I am pleased to announce a series of changes to my life that I previously was unable to acheive given the budgetary and techinical limtations at the time. I understand this is different from what some people know and love, but also understand, this was my vision all along. Let the changes commence: 1. I now look like this . 2. In the original losing my virginity scene, I shot first. This has now been corrected to show the two of us going off at the same time. Far more realistic. 3. There is now a dinosaur walking through every home movie of my childhood. 4. To emphasize my true emotion, I now scream "NOOOO!!!" any time I am upset. 5. I deleted the scene from our summer where I planned to tell you that I'd been a wimp and that I was in love with you, but you showed up to the theater with that other guy. Now I tell you right away, and the last 11 years isn't the same scene over and over again. 6. I have digitally painted out eve...

Today I knew the new novel was going to stick - there have been other 'new novels' in the last couple years - because I found myself wanting to go to the library to look up stuff. This is the weird litmus test I have with a novel. If I feel the need to go downtown and gather some books, then it's a keeper. If I don't, then I'm probably going to get bored of you pretty quickly. Maybe I should apply this to relationships. 'Hey, mamma. Want to go down to the library with me?" Books I checked out for research: "Twilight At The World of Tomorrow" (about the New York World's Fair) "You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried" (essays on the John Hughes Brat Pack movies) I wrote a scene today where the main character tries to mend her dress with scraps of fabric left over from the creation of other kit-bashed dresses for her cousins. The kernel for this scene actually began in another novel (did not go to the library for) a whil...

Darth Audrey? Nobody's perfect.

Impossibly - happily? - one of the first questions people ask me who have read Elizabeth is, when is the sequel coming out? I tell them a little about the history of this book, and they say, you must have it already in the can, what after four years and all? Yes and no. I have about 150 pages of what will someday be the sequel to Elizabeth. About half of it I wrote in 2009 or so, before this paralysis over what was going to come next took over my life. The other half more recently. I like it. Miranda is older. She has become the centerpiece of the story. Elizabeth (the book) is like one of those relationships where you fight and break up and get back together just to do it all again. I have a serious love/hate thing with it right now. I love that people seem to like it, and want more. I hate that I can't get past it and all I want to do is something else. I am writing a new book, completely and utterly different than Elizabeth. I'm 50 pages into that right now ...

So the first day out with the book, I sold ONE copy. That is one more than I've ever sold before in life, so success. It was kind of strange, and anti-climactic. I admit I was a little - not blue, but periwinkle - about the rank, which is soberingly direct. My only goal is to make the top 100,000. I believe in myself. If I felt sore at all, that was cured when I found a squirrel on the bike trail tonight that I'm pretty sure was suffering from a heat stroke. He couldn't walk (no car damage) and stared at me fuzzy while I picked him up and put him in the shade. He seemed like he was in a lot of pain. There's not much you can do about stroked squirrels or your Amazon rank. I put them to the side, and let the rest happen.

Today my book is available for purchase both in print and as an ebook. You can find the print copy here , and the Kindle version here . Versions for the Nook and iPad will be available any day now. For some reason I am 'Mr. Darby Gavin Harn' on the print page. Hmm. It took four years for this day to happen. Not to write the book. That largely took about 6 months - let's say 9 or so with revisions. I finished the book and delivered it to my publisher three years ago. It sat in limbo ever since, with shifting release dates, all the way up to last fall. It even went up for sale online, but things didn't add up. No cover. It supposedly went out for review, but it didn't. Never available from the distributor that was distributing it. After a while, the obvious finally became clear. The book was never coming out. If there was a reason for the publisher (named elsewhere on the site) not releasing the book on time or at all, it was never expressed. Not even whe...

Most of my life has gone into seeking validation. From the moment the thought formed that in order to attain validation for my writing, and by no simple extension myself, I have invested all of my energy in doing so. Decades now. Every hour and minute you can break down in those years, lost. I thought I had finally found it in 2007. I had sold my novel, The Book of Elizabeth, to a publisher. I had sold some short stories, and I thought - I knew - I had made it. All those years and frustrations, those bloody failures and false starts; justified. Redeemed. Validated. Then the last three years went by without the book coming out. Without getting paid. Without any account for the delay. I never got a clear answer as to why - there was always a different reason, or easy deflection - so I don't know if it was that the book wasn't what they thought it would be. Or they just had no idea what to do with it. Or they found something new and shiny and like other authors, I wa...