Henry James thought “summer afternoon” to be the two most beautiful words in the English language. The hopeless romantic in me wants to agree. He can see the melancholy beauty of the landscape only two words create. He can see a place, a time, he can feel a faint breeze.
And he can also feel love. Continue reading
“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” Orson Welles
Sometimes when I write I think too much. I worry about things I shouldn’t worry about, and I write as if I’ve got something to prove to someone. That’s a mistake. Over thinking, trying to outsmart the reader only to outsmart yourself.
When I wrote Jazz I wanted for the ending to the story to deliver a certain message. Throughout the novel there’s some talk about happy endings, about what we want to get from life, and stuff like that. Of course, those characters are mistaken in their belief that happiness is a destination, but nevertheless… they want and try to reach for something, and they’re not even sure what that something is. Continue reading
We’ve been told (and we keep on telling ourselves on a regular basis) that life finds a way, that somehow things turn out for the better. That if you want it, you can have it.
Sadly, that’s not true.
Do you know what keeps me up some nights? It’s the fear that somehow I won’t be able to write anymore. That somehow life’s going to take that away from me. And that I won’t be able to find a way, that life just won’t want to present me with a solution. Continue reading
They say you can’t beat a man who doesn’t give up.
The first piece of writing I ever wrote was rubbish. And I kept on adding more rubbish. Then I wrote something else. And then someone said I was a retard. And I wanted to prove them wrong.
I’ve failed time and time again. In all aspects of life.
The first novel I self-published sold 4 copies in 4 months. It got a single 2 star review on Goodreads, and then I unpublished the damn thing.
And yet I didn’t give up.
“An artist is always alone – if he is an artist.” – Henry Miller
Writing is a lonely job, no doubt about it. And no matter how successful you might become, you’re still alone. It’s the inexorable truth of the writer’s condition: you sit at your desk, in an empty room or in the most crowded McDonald’s, and you’re alone. You just do your thing.
Of course, this poses a rather interesting question: if you spend that much time alone, how do you find stuff to write about? Continue reading
I decided to release an e-book bundle with all my releases. It’s sort of a like a limited time offer, and it runs out at the end of the month.
What do you get?
1. Jazz – my debut novel, which currently holds a 4.9 rating on Amazon.com. I had this to say about it:
A heartbreaking portrayal of ambition, treachery, and deception, Jazz tells the story of Chris Sommers, an aspiring writer from New York, who travels to Paris in the hopes of meeting Amber, a mysterious and beautiful woman he has always been irresistibly drawn to.
Chris is soon thrust into a world where everyone seems to be playing a dangerous and corrupt game. Anything is permissible, and even secrets that have been locked away inside the most hidden drawers of the soul will resurface. Continue reading
When I was a kid there were two days I waited eagerly for: Christmas, when it was also my birthday, and I would receive presents and stuff, and Easter.
When I was a kid, Easter to me was silence. It seemed that way, as if the whole world was looking back on something. We were all contemplating a better world, but not with the same hope one holds on the first of January. It was something different, more primordial than that. It was not a promise we made to ourselves, but a promise someone else had made to us. Continue reading
It was about time for my legendary bad luck to do some damage. Now, the Internet modem died, which kind of brought me back to the the early 1900s. Or at least that’s how I felt. And now I’ve got a couple hundred e-mails to read…
Of course, the Indiegogo campaign failed to raise the money it needed.
But all this got me thinking. About life, about those moments when we feel (and often say) that life’s not fair, or that some things happen for a reason or for no reason at all.
You know, that kind of determinism that’s tied to someone upstairs or others around us. Or someone half a world away. Continue reading
Today is International Jazz Day, which I just found out about, actually. But I thought I should share with you one of my favorite scenes from my debut novel, which is incidentally called Jazz. It’s a scene close to the end, and I remember having so much fun writing it. I was dancing to this really cool jazz tune, and I was really, really enjoying myself. It’s strange, isn’t it, that something so simple as writing some words on a piece of paper can bring us so much joy?
When it doesn’t matter, and we simply don’t care about whether or not people will enjoy it, when we don’t have to worry about marketing, about target audiences, about reviews, pricing, and whether or not the cover will suit the story.
So, yeah, here’s one of my favorite scenes from something I wrote a while back. Continue reading
When asked, ‘How do you write?’ I invariably answer, ‘one word at a time.’ – Stephen King
Sometimes I catch a glimpse of the future. Whether is just a scene from a chapter I have yet to write, or the ending line, or just a few lines of dialogue. That’s magic. That’s power. I know something that no one else knows, and it’s entirely up to me to bring it to life. I’m unique, in the way that I’m the only one who can write that scene or chapter, I’m the only one who can write my story. Continue reading