Cosmic horror, sophomore blues, and better problems

Yeah, this one is about a lot of things

Hello, everyone! Hope this finds you well. It’s Saturday, so I also hope it finds you doing something you love. I feel like I had a nice rhythm going with this thing for a while, but then life and the tour took over. In any case, here we are again! Let’s talk about some things.

Cosmic horror

I’ve always loved cosmic horror. I’ve written some and a few f my novels touch on it briefly, with House of Bone and Rain being the strongest, most obvious example of Lovecraftian elements and cosmic horror being right there in the open. Well, at the start of the week, the new novel I’m writing (the one that came out of nowhere, took my surprise, and has me working on two novel at once) grabbed me by the neck and told me it’s going to be extremely violent cosmic horror. I’m rolling with it. Also, that brings me to…

Space stuff

What I watch depends largely on my mood. For the past few weeks, I haven’t been in the mood to watch movies. Instead, I’ve been watching documentaries about space. Yes, probably because I’ve been thinking a lot about cosmic horror and the evil, ageless things that swim in the darkest spaced in the universe. However, it mostly has to do with this “learning” mood I sometimes get in. I just want information, to know more. Space documentaries never fail to teach me something about the cosmos. Maybe I’ll share a full list when I’m done, but for now I highly recommend The Jupiter Enigma and Quark Science (I’ve rewatched several episodes).

The sophomore blues

This is a strangely personal space. I know about 2000 people read every newsletter, which is great, but it feels different than social media—more personal, obviously longer, a tad more nuanced—and that’s a good thing. In any case, if you’ve read this thing recently you know that I was anxious about the new novel. I still am, but being on the road for a while helped a lot. Now I’m home for a couple weeks before going to Mississippi Book Festival and then on to Connecticut for StoryFest before flying from NYC to Orlando for the Florida part of the tour: Gainesville on the 22nd at Third House Books with Brian Alan Ellis, St. Petersburg on the 24th at Tombolo Books with Ryan Whitley, and Coral Gables in the 25th at Books and Books with Alejandro Nodarse. Oh, and then I’m doing a cool thing in Arkansas. Anyway, point is, the road always helps. However, the sophomore blues is real. Thankfully, that thing inside me that wants to prove everyone wrong finally kicked in and now the mood is no longer '“I will never get another book deal”; now the mood is “Watch me get this new book deal!” I think we don’t talk about this enough, but that’s the attitude every writer should always have. Not every book will perform the same. It’s hard to keep the attention on your book when the world is burning. But we can’t control any of that. The only thing we can control is the work we put in, and I’m working my ass off to make the next book even better than House of Bone and Rain.

Better problems

The good, the bad, and the ugly, right? Part of what I try to do every day is put information out there. I do it to fight the avalanche of misinformation online (people who have never sold or had an agent or published a book tend to have a lot of opinions about publishing, and they put them out there as if their opinions are facts). I also do it because I wish there had been someone doing it when I started. So yeah, this is for all the writers starting out. Here’s an ugly truth: you will still have problems when you land the contract of your dreams. Now here’s a beautiful truth: I’ve been obsessing about two offers I received. See? Your problems don’t go away, but you also have better problems, so keep doing the thing. You got this.

I have a lot of reading to do today (and some writing in the afternoon), so I’ll stop here. Much more soon. Stay awesome and take care of yourself. Cheers.