News & Events for C. Dennis Moore

I'm 33,000 words into the Angel Hill novel and haven't been able to do a thing with it in almost two weeks.  I kept thinking it was because I hadn't settled on an ending and without it I didn't know what I was writing toward.  But I don't think that's it.  The problem is bad planning.

When I wrote THE THIRD FLOOR, I had written that story twice already, once longhand in a 6-page story back in 1992, then a later, 30-page version.  I then spent probably ten years letting the story gestate before I sat down to write the actual novel version.  With this new one, I got an idea of an idea and started writing.  I know the story well enough I could just sit down and write the next 20,000 words or so, but it would suck.  Because I don't know my characters, my setting, or my situation well enough to make it all count.  I didn't plan the novel well enough.  That's not to say I need detailed character bios and maps or anything--but, truth be told, I had character bios for the Kitch family, along with pictures of people I thought looked like them, as well as a map of Angel Hill and several years of having lived in that house, so I knew the layout pretty well--but I do need to know these things better than I do.  I knew there would be a point where I needed more information on my characters, and I kept telling myself I could come back later and fill it in.  But I'm to the point where I should be doing that, and I can't, because I don't know them.  Nor do I know the setting well enough.  I have a vague image in my head of what it looks like, but that's not good enough.  It's not going to make the place real for the reader if it isn't real for me.  So the problem in going further is lack of planning.  And a handful of scenes are in the wrong order.

I need to restructure the first part of the novel, moving a big chunk from the third part into the first, the part where I finally introduced a handful of the side characters.  I skipped it in the beginning, because I could always do it later, which I did, in a very vague, general way, but I need to move that closer to the beginning so that, in those later scenes, we've already met them and we can see their development instead of their introduction.

I've said it before but it bears repeating: writing novels is HARD.

There were no new words this morning on the Angel Hill novel.  I'm at a point where I need to figure out the direction of the rest of this story, so I took a break from writing and spent the morning taking notes instead, asking myself questions about where the story needs to go, where I want it to go, what needs to happen and what further details about the town of Angel Hill I want to reveal in this book.  I think I got some good notes taken, some important questions answered, but I'm certainly not finished with this process.  There's more I need to figure out before I continue writing because, while I could easily rattle off another 1000 words right now, they would be empty words that didn't advance the story at all.  I'm 25,000 words in, it's time to figure out, once and for all, which of the several possible directions this story is actually going to take.

Don't forget, for the next three days, my novella "Epoch Winter" is free on Amazon by going here.

What's it about?

RUNNING FROM HIS PAST

Yahto is a Lakotan man trying to escape the sins of his past by throwing himself headlong into a forced solitude in the Canadian Rockies. Haunted by the memories of bloodshed at Little Big Horn, he is trying desperately to forget the violence he knows lies within him.

A WOMAN OUT OF TIME

Yoko is found freezing and pregnant in the snow. Yahto helps her to shelter and safety and as the two spend a long hard winter together, their bond becomes stronger and stronger.

Yoko tells him of where she comes from, a place of machines and tests, while Yahto fills her with Lakotan folklore, both trying to forget the past and focus on what’s to come, namely Yoko’s baby, which will be due very soon.

But what Yoko didn’t tell him, what he found out only when he saw her dragging the frozen body out of their cabin, into the woods, is that the people she escaped from will most likely stop at nothing to get her back. And no matter how much experience the old warrior has, it’s nothing compared to the weapons at their disposal. The winter snow gets harder to survive with few resources, no allies, and an army from another world tracking them.

AN UNBREAKABLE BOND

Despite the obstacles facing them, Yahto vows no harm will come to Yoko and the baby, a vow he’ll do anything to keep, even when the lightening flashes and a squad of armed men emerges from the trees around their cabin.

Horror writer C. Dennis Moore (author of the novel REVELATIONS) weaves a unique tale of fantasy and science fiction wrapped up on a blanket of myth and folklore from another time in this 12,000 word novella, one of his most accomplished works of fiction. “Epoch Winter” is a harsh story, told in such detail you can feel the chill in your bones as you share space with the characters, and with an ending so twisted your brain will be left in knots.

The next Angel Hill novel is currently at 25,094 words.  That's halfway to official novel length, and I'm liking this story more and more every day.  That's because I'm discovering more and more about it every day.  Last night as I lay awake listening to the storm and trying to sleep, a lot of facts about my main character came to me and it's going to help greatly in moving forward and figuring out the direction of the rest of the book.  The ending is still up in the air as I've come up with a couple of different ways it could end.  I just have to wait until I actually get there to see which, if any of those possibilities is the real ending.  It's also possible it'll be none of them and then ending will be a surprise even to me.  I actually like those endings the most.  For example, The Third Floor was supposed to end very differently than it did.

I'm trying a little experiment with some of my books for the next few months.  I've put my novellas "Safe at Home", "Camdigan" and "Epoch Winter" as well as my mini collections "Five Fates" and "Five Fantasies" on KDP Select to see what, if any, effect this has on them.  I tried this last year, or maybe the year before, with my collections "Terrible Thrills", "Icons to Ashes" and "Dancing On a Razorblade" to little effect, but at the time I also hadn't sold over 14,000 copies of a novel, so maybe, hopefully, this time it goes over a little better.  Then again, what I've learned from "Son of Man" being free on Amazon for so long was that, surprisingly, free books don't move as many copies as you'd think.  At least that one didn't.  So we'll see how many, if any, Prime members try out one or more of my books for free for a week or so.  I'll definitely be making some of them free for a few days at some point, I just haven't decided when yet.  For now, though, you can go to my Author Page for more.

I'm making good progress on both new Angel Hill projects.  The next novel is now at 23,046 words and was getting pretty creepy this morning before I moved over to the other book, Return to Angel Hill, which is the collaboration I'm writing with David Bain, bringing his slightly psychic detective Will Castleton to town.  We're taking turns with the sections and the next one is mine.  I worked on it a little bit last night after work but only got about 300 words before I had to shut down and go watch some Doctor Who with my daughter instead.  So I got back into it this morning and tried to do some more.  I can't just write 300 words and pass it back, that's not how I work.  But I just sat and stared at it for the longest time this morning, which was probably only about 5 minutes,but 5 minutes is a long time when you're doing nothing but staring at words on a page.  Then I realized the problem.  I'm working with someone else's characters in someone else's setting (we haven't quite got to Angel Hill just yet, we're still in Green River), so I had to go back to the source material and look in Dave's novel Death Sight for details.  That helped a LOT and I was able to add some more.  It was only another 400 words, but I could have gone longer if it wasn't getting so late.  But at least I have something now that I can pick up from after work tonight.  We're nowhere near at the word count the other book is, but I've been working on that one longer and have a clearer idea where it's going, but Return is definitely coming along nicely.

That's right, the next Angel Hill novel is currently at 22,011 words so far, but that's not even halfway there.  I've never had any illusions of being a full-time novelist (that's not true, I've had that dream many many times, but it's always with the understanding that it's just a dream and not a likely reality).  And why is that?  Because novel writing is, as I've said a thousand times, HARD.  I have huge amounts of respect for writers who can pull it off, working every single day, for several hours, on novels, for months at a time until they're done.  I don't have that kind of stamina.  I just had to take a week off from this book because I was worn out from it.  Writing is hard, but writing novels is friggin' exhausting.  But I'm back to it, and hope to top 25,000 by the end of this week.  I can do 1000 words a day.  And while I had said a while back that one of my problems with this novel was that I didn't have that one scene I was dying to write, that one image I needed to get to that kept me going every day, I have it now.  But I'm not sure where or how it fits, or if that image is even going to be in the novel.  Right now, it's just a mood I'm trying to capture.  There's a sense of dread I'm trying to put into this book, and that image urges me forward and gives me hope of making it work.

It's all coming together, in its own time.  25,000 by the end of this week.

My goal this morning was a mere 700 words.  I just wanted to reach 15,000 on the new Angel Hill novel.  But I hit a stride and found a topic and a line of thought for my character that I couldn't just stop in the middle of, nor ignore.  Especially not after that last half hour or so she's been through.  She needed a moment of calm reflection, something to help her better connect, emotionally, with her situation.  Also, hopefully she's found the key to sticking this out and seeing it through to the end instead of deciding she can't handle what's going on and she bails.  Because if she did that, I wouldn't have a book.  So I nearly doubled my goal, bring the novel, so far, to 15,379 words.

I got an email yesterday from a teacher in Indiana, Deborah Ward, who's student Kristin found my website while they were working on a project to update their own website.  They said hi and offered up their own link for me to check out, which I found very interesting.  You always wonder, being on the inside, if your influences and interests come through well in the things you put out there for the world to see, and I'd have to say, in this case, that's a yes, because they knew exactly the kind of thing I'd be interested in seeing.  Check out this link for "Horror Legend Stephen King"

Thanks to Deborah Ward and Kristin.

The new novel, which remains untitled, is currently at 14,302 words (1125 new words this morning), and is coming along nicely.  But it was a rough morning.

I sat down this morning with a very clear idea of what I was going to write, what was going to happen in the scene I had been working on yesterday, only to find that the words were very slow in coming.  It took about an hour and maybe a total of 300 words before I realized why it was I was having so much trouble when the scene was perfectly clear in my head.  It's because the scene I was writing was mostly atmosphere and tension with little action advancing the plot and, unfortunately, you can't just speed through writing atmosphere.  Atmosphere takes patience.  Action scenes are written pretty quickly because the story is moving along at such a quick pace, the words follow suit.  But when a main character is creeping along a dark corridor trying to find the source of the two disembodied voices she hears arguing, and you're trying to build the tension inside her to the point she bolts and runs, you have to take your time and make sure those feelings are there, that your word choices are right and that you're not getting too far ahead of yourself before you've crafted the right sense of dread.

I got through it, though, and I think the next scene is going to be a lot less eerie, which, hopefully, will make the words come easier.  We'll see.

Writing novels is not only hard, it's also a very strange thing to do.  For example, I started this new Angel Hill novel with a pretty clear idea of the story and the course it was going to take.  I had images and scenes formed in my head and what I thought was a pretty interesting, character-driven story.  I wrote 10,000 words.  Then I woke up a few mornings ago with this whole new vision in my head.  The story hasn't changed at all, but certain small details, all of which add up to some very big details, have changed in the overall vision and now, finally, after 10,000 words, I have the novel in my head and I'm excited to write it.  I haven't sat at my desk with reluctance so far this week--I know, it's only Tuesday, but still.

It's still the story I thought it was, only it's not the story I thought it was.  It's much darker.  It's a lot more surreal and definitely more spooky and atmostpheric.  I'd thought I was just writing another ghost story, but that's not the case at all.  At the very least, the ghosts aren't what I thought they were at first.  Now they're much worse.  The main character is told in the beginning that the ghosts can't hurt her, that they're just unspent energy.  We'll see about that.

I think the original ending I had in mind is still intact, so that's good.  And I don't think this thing will be quite as long as I'd originally planned, but it's all happening over a shorter timeline, too, so it doesn't need to be.  And this illustrates the beauty of this digital self-publishing age.  Used to be your novel had to be around 100,000 words, but, well, some stories don't need 100,000 words to be effective and sometimes authors dump another 10,000-30,000 words into a story to meet that word count and end up diluting their story to nothing.  But we don't have to do that anymore.  I can write 50,000 words and say it's a novel and I wouldn't be wrong.  50,000 is the minimum word count for a novel and there's no publisher standing over my shoulder telling me I have to make it longer.  No, I don't.  I'm sure this book will definitely be longer than 50,000 but my point is I won't feel pressured to make sure it is.  And that's very comforting and freeing.  I'm at 13,140 and counting.

And finally, if you haven't seen this, you seriously need to.

First up this morning, the new Angel Hill novel is coming along very well.  I hit my goal this morning, which was 10,000 words, and now I finally feel I'm well on my way to writing a novel.  Novel writing is not easy, not at all (which is why I've written so few of them in 22 years of writing), but I think once you've got a good chunk of words down, and the thing starts to look and feel like more than a short story, once you've pushed past a certain number of words, the idea that you're actually doing it, actually writing a NOVEL, it starts to feel a little easier.  I had to write 1500 words this morning to get to it, but I did it in an hour and now I've got a good solid 10,000 words on this thing so far.  Hopefully the next 10,000 comes even easier.

Also today my short story collaboration with David Bain, titled Terror Is Our Trade, in which we trade off short stories from all of our respective collections, begins its 5-day run as a FREE ebook for your Kindle.  From today until the 17th of March, you can get 10 stories (including my novella "Safe at Home" and Dave's novella "Cauldron Car") for free.  You'll also get a Gray Lake and a Third Floor excerpt as well as an excerpt from our collaborative novella Band of Gypsies.  It's a pretty good collection, we think, so check it out.  If you like what you see, tell a friend.  To get the book, just click the cover below and follow the link: