Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers: From Point-and-Click Adventure Game to Sort-Of Fantasy Novel (Part 1)

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Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers Carson's Room postcard

My second (and even more ridiculous) novel, Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers, is available for pre-order through my webstore, where you can get a signed copy and support me financially as an indie author, since when you buy directly from me, a bigger share of the sale goes to the author than if you buy on Amazon.

Today, though, I want to talk about how the novel came to be, why I’ve been working on this story in some form since 2008, and how a single story can take vastly different shapes

 

After College Ended, I Needed a Creative Project to Work On

Let’s rewind alllllllllll the way to summer 2007.  I’d just finished college, and was living at home in New Hampshire, working a temporary internship with a lake protection group.  I’d also just broken up with my girlfriend, a lot of my friends weren’t around anymore, my student loans were coming due, my trusty 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme had to be scrapped due to a rusted-out brake line, and it felt like people were constantly asking me what I was going to do with my life.  When fall rolled around, my internship went from full-time to part-time, and I started spending more time at home.  It was a rough, lonely, and uncertain period in my life. Continue reading »

New Year’s Updates, Future Plans, and How to Navigate Life’s Challenges

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Happy New Year, everybody. I’m writing this two weeks into 2025 after taking some time off for the holidays, spending four days in Connecticut presenting at the in-person university residency where I teach online, and in general, getting oriented to being back at my desk.

It’s been a while since I updated this blog—that’s party by choice (I want to be spending my time on other things), partly by necessity (I’ve been too damned busy), and partly because I’m in transition (working on an updated version of my author page that should be up in a few months).

But I still want to keep people updated, let them know what’s going on, and assure all of you that I’m still moving toward my goals. If I’m being honest with myself, though, I haven’t been moving toward them as fast or as smoothly as I’d like, and I’ve been working on some serious course correction to get myself back on track.

In this post, I want to start by summarizing what I did in 2024 (a continuation of a separate year-end series I used to do), then move on to 2025, what the future holds, Continue reading »

MFA Thesis Novel Book Club Guide & Author Interview

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Cool news from the MFA Thesis Novel front: this month Vine Leaves Press and I released the MFA Thesis Novel Book Club Guide, which includes an author interview with yours truly and discussion questions for the novel.  It’s free for download from the link above, and starting this month, it’s included with the eBook version of the novel as a bonus.

Here’s a quick snippet:

Q: What inspired you to write MFA Thesis Novel?

A: As the novel itself hints, MFA Thesis Novel sprang from my experience in graduate school at the University of Nebraska, though my program was technically an MA. I was workshopping a novel based on my time working in Japan, but the subject matter and the style I was writing in were so foreign that people around me couldn’t relate to the book. At the same time, the program seemed to be pushing us to build up longer and more impressive CVs rather than improve our writing, which I found disconcerting. Like Flip, it took me a long time to realize which parts of the program were helpful and which parts weren’t conducive to the career path I was looking for.

Read the rest of the interview here. Continue reading »

2023 Reflections: What Went Well, and What Didn’t

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I’m not going to lie: 2023 was a rough year.

Though 2023 started off on an optimistic note, and the first half went really well, the second half took a major nosedive as my productivity, organization, and overall mood went WAY down.

So what happened? How did the year spiral downward, how did I handle it, and where does that leave me in 2024?

Let the 2023 reflections begin. Continue reading »

What Happened When My Entire Life Got Upended

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I’ve had a rough couple of months because of something REALLY bad that happened back in the fall.  At first I wasn’t sure how to talk about it online, or even if I wanted to reveal it because it involved my family.  Fortunately, though, the problem’s cooled way down in the past month, and in thinking about what a crazy time it’s been, I decided I wanted to write about it frankly and honestly.

What happened is a long and complicated story, so please bear with me while I explain some intricate details, simplify others, and leave a handful of moments vague to protect some people’s anonymity.

In telling this story, though, I want to share that 1) Sometimes really bad things happen that make it incredibly difficult to do creative work, and 2) Dealing with those problems, and ultimately solving them, is a vital skill.

Here’s the story: Continue reading »

A Signed a Contract for My Second Novel!!!!!!!

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Big news! Last month I signed a contract with Vine Leaves Press to publish my second novel, Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers, in 2025.  This is the Secret New Novel I’ve been talking about on this blog for literally years.  Vine Leaves published my first novel, MFA Thesis Novel, in spring 2022 and were super-great to work with, so it was only natural that I wanted to publish Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers with them as well.

What’s Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers actually about, you ask?  Well, LARPing (a.k.a. Live-Action Role-Playing) for one.  More specifically, it’s about fantasy role-playing in the real world, with a group of twentysomethings on a quest to rescue a lost Commodore 64 from some bullies in the New Hampshire woods.

Also, it’s narrated in ye olde fantasy English speak, with wizards and maidens and stuff, even though it’s the real world. And the characters talk a lot about ’80s movies.

That’s the bare-bones gist. If you’re wondering why I waited so long to mention the deal in the age of same-day instant internet news, the answer is that I’ve been held up with a little Non-Creative Work Issue that I’ll be talking about in another post.  For now, if you want to know more, read on to find out how the deal happened and what comes next. Continue reading »

Creative People Should Speak Out Against Bad Business Practices

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I’ve blogged before about how I avoid buying things on Amazon (especially books!) whenever possible, since I don’t want to give money to a gigantic corporation that’s not only made the publishing landscape worse for authors and small publishers, it’s wreaked havoc on the retail economy as a whole.

I avoid Amazon because I want to make better decisions about where my money goes, how I live my life, and most importantly, how I portray myself as a writer and a creative person.  For me, this was about making a REALLY important decision:

Am I the kind of writer who stands up for what I believe in, or the kind of writer who takes the easy route?

When I built my author webpage, I intentionally set up the page for MFA Thesis Novel in a way that encouraged people to buy it literally anywhere except Amazon, then put a link to the Amazon page at the bottom, if readers absolutely had to get it there.  This seemed like a good balance between clarifying what kinds of buying options I wanted readers to consider (independent bookstores, Bookshop.org, and other non-Amazon online options) while also acknowledging the unfortunate reality that Amazon controls an enormous share of the book-buying market, and many readers (especially casual ones) are likely to go there first. Continue reading »

To Blog or Not to Blog? Is Regular Blogging Worth It?

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June was a busy month for me: I got back into working on my Secret New Novel draft (which won’t be Secret for much longer!), I had a few editing jobs that needed finishing, and I’m *still* unpacking and organizing after my move back in April.

As a result, I realized that I needed a blogging break, and took the last two weeks of June off.  For several years now, I’ve been blogging regularly every week with very few weeks missed, but during June, blogging felt less important than the other, more urgent matters demanding my attention.

Of course, the world didn’t come to an end because I didn’t blog for two weeks.  Instead, I felt more in control of my workload, and felt like I was prioritizing based on what needed to be done.
Continue reading »

Go Outside. Every. Single. Day.

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Family with old car in city

When I was younger and thinking about my path to a creative life, I used to worry about being stuck at home.  If I was working on novels and desk work all day, I reasoned, I’d be tied to my desk at home, which meant I’d be cooped up never seeing anyone.  That sounded pretty lonely.  And depressing.

Part of this fear, I think, stemmed from a rough patch I went through after college where I wasn’t working regularly. During that year I spent a lot of time at home, sleeping late, taking care of my mother’s hyper-energetic dogs, and in general not doing much of anything because I didn’t have a work routine or good work habits yet.

After I entered the Day Job world, though, I realized that Day Jobs provided a way to get out of my house, accomplish set goals, and in general provide structure to my life.

I stayed in this mindset for a long time, easing out of it only when I had my first work-from-home job, and later in Japan during COVID-19 restrictions, when I also spent a lot of time at home.

Now that I structure my own writing and editing life, though, I have almost the opposite problem: I’m so comfortable with my at-home working routine that I get sucked into it, doing so much at my desk and around the apartment that before I know it Continue reading »

Networking Is NOT a Dirty Word

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Last Saturday I went to the New Hampshire Writer’s Project yearly writer’s conference, the largest writing conference in my area.  It was a chance to hear a keynote speaker, participate in writing workshops, and learn more about marketing and promotion.

All that stuff was pretty useful, I guess (read: it was a lot of stuff I already knew), but one thing about the conference made me really, REALLY glad I went: the chance to meet people.

I wrote last week about how you present yourself as a creative person when you’re meeting people in social situations like weddings.  This applies even more in professional situations, where people actually WANT to know about your creative work and expect you to present yourself as a creative professional.  These situations can be even easier, I think, because in these situations, people are actively interested in learning about the work you do, since it’s potentially in the same realm as what they do.

In this post I want to talk a bit about how I’ve tackled networking and conference-type situations over the years, what I’ve learned, and where I screwed up.
Continue reading »

Presenting Yourself Like a Boss (And a Creative Person)

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A few days ago I attended a friend’s wedding in central Pennsylvania, where I also served as the officiant (i.e., the person who conducts the ceremony).  It was a fun time for sure, and I got to meet a lot of new, interesting people while I was there.

The majority of wedding guests seemed to be in their early 30s, though there were a few Gen X-ers there as well.  I also really only knew the bride and groom, so after the ceremony I found myself in a position to sit down at a random table and introduce myself to people I didn’t know.  (All the weddings I’ve been to in the last two decades have been for close friends and family, so this was a relatively new experience.)

As such, when it came time to introduce myself and people asked me the “What do you do?” question, without thinking, I naturally responded with, “I’m a writer.”

And people thought that was really cool. Continue reading »

Side Hustle Highlights: Language Teaching

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Last week I talked about my adjunct job mentoring students in an online MFA program, where I work with students during the Fall and Spring semesters to show them the ropes of what an editor does. It’s a cool job that pays decently, and it’s helped me grow as a teacher and professional while also helping me make some good contacts.

This week, though, I want to highlight two of my other side hustles: teaching English as a Second Language online, and teaching Japanese in person. Both are steady sources of income that help me sustain my freelance lifestyle, and both help me use my teaching skills in ways I find interesting and stimulating.

So, without further ado, here’s how the side hustle teaching game works:
Continue reading »