Publications: A Change of Pace

As much as I enjoyed writing the Unveiled books, I was ready for a change and, besides, I had some more issues to work through. I’m not generally a conspiracy fan but 9/11 got everyone’s attention, especially with that whitewash report the federal government produced. However, in Night Shift, I got distracted from the conspiracy theory and really dug into a tragic relationship between two people who couldn’t have been more different.

This book was a lot of fun to write, even though part of the story was tragic. I felt as if I knew Faheem and Sofia personally by the end. What a crazy couple, but they stuck it out despite their differences and what was happening to them, most of it their own fault. I’m still not certain if Faheem stumbled onto the truth…

I did a lot of reading about psychology and behavioral disorders while writing Night Shift; so, naturally, I was inspired to write about myself, not in an autobiographical style but more as a novel with a central character who could be me. Thus, A Change of Pace was created to write about myself anonymously. There’s a little biography in there but not much; nevertheless, Jim Walsh is as close to me as I can imagine a character. I also noted some eery similarities to my life that were not intentional. Perhaps writing a pseudo-autobiography was therapeutic after all.

The cover sets the stage for this light romantic comedy about a fish out of water. Besides jumping from action/adventure to romantic comedy, I also did the cover artwork myself. I had used the same studio for the previous four books but this one seemed too simple for their expertise (they specialized in hand-painted fantasy art). Thus, the cover features the motorhome I was living in at the time and my old Land Cruiser, but I never lived in an upscale apartment in my life. That part is fantasy.

I love writing novels because it’s like binge watching several seasons of a favorite show and getting to know the characters intimately. There is so much that can’t be squeezed into the final text. Still, it can be fun to explore a stranger’s life for a few days, a span of time too brief to really get to know them, yet long enough to reveal something significant about their lives.

I took a break from writing novels to write a series of short stories that shared a common theme, which developed while working on them. I collected them together into Class of 1974. Imagine the different lives of people who graduated high school the same year, but had nothing else in common; until they all won the lottery.

These stories share two common themes: the title implies that the stories are tied to a rather dismal year in recent American history; the second commonality is more dependent on luck. I created the cover from a stylized Escher staircase showing people going nowhere, which seems appropriate for my cohort. 

I think every writer should write short stories between major works. It’s like writing practice. And short stories are a great break from the concentration necessary to complete a novel, not to mention the lengthy timeline. I think the idea for Mirror Images originated in a dream (I can’t remember for sure) with a lot of images flashing past, nothing recognizable; it may have been my waking memory of a series of static dreams. At any rate the eventual result was a collection of stories sharing as many mirror metaphors as I could think of. 

I fell in love with this photo I found on Shutterstock because it conveys so much in a simple black and white format, and it was a large image so it could be used for the entire paperback cover. Mirror Images contains a couple of stories I don’t care for (unhappy endings) and several I loved writing and enjoy reading over and over. I’d love to hear what you think.

That’s enough for this reboot post. Next time we dive deep into science fiction.