Duane

Well, for some reason it took me almost three months to write this one.  Why’d it take so long?  Well, a lot of it had to do with some personal stuff I was dealing with, and I also had to edit a cookbook for our neighbor and get it ready for publication for her, so things sort of just kept getting in the way.  Tonight however, I finally managed to get it done, and I’ll start editing it tomorrow.  There will be one more book in the series, at least for now.  I may come back to it, but my plan is and has been to end it with book 20, which will mostly involve Jake and Lana’s story from a little before they met until they reached that town in Utah they were headed to at the beginning of Travelers.

The people in this series have become a second family to me, and as such I’ll never be able to truly say it’s done.  I know I’ll probably come back to it and write some more at some point, but I have another book that’s completely unrelated to the series that I want to write after the next one, and then we’ll see where that one goes.  Maybe it’ll become a series of its own, or maybe it’ll just be a standalone.  I really don’t know at this point, and I won’t know until I reach the end of it.  If I feel like it’s nothing more than a single story, then it’ll be a standalone.  If I feel like there’s more to tell with those characters, then I’ll continue on with it.

As for the characters in the Unseen Things universe…they’ll always live in my heart.  I’ve put so much into giving them life since I wrote the first book back in October of 2013, that I can’t even fathom writing a distinct and final ending for the series.  The thing is, after 19 books now, and soon a 20th, I need a little break.  I need some time to figure out where things will go in the future, or if they’ll continue on at all.  The way this latest book ends is different from the others in the series.  Most of the time there’s a little cliffhanger that leads you into the next book.  In this one, I just end it without a cliffhanger.  If this was the final book of the series, it would feel like an appropriate ending, and that’s how I’ll write the next one as well.  If the next one truly is the end, then I hope I’ll have left people satisfied.  If not, then hopefully I’ll have left them wanting more so they’ll continue this journey with me.  In any case, whatever the future holds, I’ll be eternally grateful that I’ve been a part of this universe, and a part of my characters’ lives.  They represent things to me that I often find lacking in humanity.  Things like honor, friendship, loyalty, love and a sense of family.  They give me hope, and they’ve given me something that no one else could – a sense of purpose.

Anyway, I’ll get started on the editing tomorrow.  Usually it takes me from four to seven days to do the editing, and then I’ll get it published.  After I finish writing the next one, which will be called Invasion by the way, I’m going to focus some of my time and effort into getting things reformatted and published on Createspace, so I’ll be able to make hard copies available as well as the e-books.  That will be a slow process, but I’ll start with the first one and get through them one at a time until they’re all available in print form.  For right now though, I just need to focus on what’s in front of me, which is a very tedious editing process that I very rarely enjoy.

Throughout this series, I’ve been quite fascinated by how one seemingly innocuous event can affect something way later on, or become a major part of the Unseen Things canon.  In the one I’m currently writing, Reapers (book 19 of the series), I’ve not only tied things back to one of the characters in books 1 and 2, but I’ve also linked an event that’s mentioned earlier in this book as the triggering event for it all.  It’s the biggest connective jump I’ve made in the series, and it’s one of those things where when you realize what you’ve done, you just sort of sit back and admire it for what it is.  This book also goes deeper into the end result of the event that triggered it, which involves dimensional frequencies and quantum entanglement.

I never really know what I’m going to write until I actually write it, thereby allowing the story to flow in a natural way.  That’s why it’s even more remarkable when I’m able to make these connections to past events far down the road.  They weren’t planned in any way whatsoever.  The connections were created by the natural flow of the story, which makes them all the more special and fun for me.  The triggering event for the quantum entanglement ended up being something I briefly mentioned earlier in this book that at the time didn’t seem to have much to do with anything.  It was nothing more than a simple bit of information that Rickman and the colonel had gathered from the friendlies when looking for information about Purgatory, but that one event has now become the trigger for the major event that led to how things became in that dimension afterward.

Like I said, these sorts of connections have happened throughout the series, but the magnitude of the ones that are taking place in this particular book have me genuinely excited.

I’m working on chapter 10 right now, so I have six more chapters to write after that, and then I have to edit it.  I’m not sure how much longer it’ll be, but it’ll be out at some point in December I would imagine.

After over two weeks of not writing at all because I had other things I needed to deal with, I started reading back through what I’d written already in the current book, just to get myself back in that head space again.  I’m happy to report that I’ve started writing again, and today I finished chapter 6.

Back on the horse!  Woohoo! 😀

Ok, after…jeez, maybe two and a half weeks or so where I didn’t write anything because I was trying to finish editing that cookbook I was working on as a favor for our neighbor, and some other things that kept dragging my attention away from the book, I’m finally getting back into it.  Unfortunately, I was either in the middle of, or I’d finished chapter six, so I’ve been reading through it from the very beginning, just to get my head back into what was going on, and the timeline of everything.  I actually fixed a few minor things along the way so far, but I still have three more chapters to get through before I can start writing again.  I’m thinking that by tomorrow at some point I’ll be able to get back to it.

Aside from that, there’s really not a whole lot going on.  I have a small little project coming up that I’ll be working on.  See, I’m a bass player, and I have been since about 1987.  Earlier this year I was in our local Guitar Center, and I found a Sterling S.U.B. bass used that looked like it had just come out of the box.  I mean, if someone played it, they maybe played it once or twice and that’s it.  It was in like new condition and I think I got it for $179 bucks, when they sell new for $299, so I got that and a hard shell case for it and trotted happily back home with my treasure.

The bass itself, while like new as far as the construction was concerned, did have a couple of problems.  It needed the fret ends filed and smoothed, it needed to be set up to get rid of the fret buzz that seems to plague pretty much any model of Musicman bass (mostly because people never bother setting them up properly), and it’s got noise when the treble knob is up past 1/4 of the way to center, and only gets worse the higher up you go.  This is probably a shielding issue, but I can take care of that easily.  Unfortunately, because the stock preamp is also only a two-band with bass and treble, the treble knob includes a lot of mid-range frequencies, which makes it difficult to dial in a good tone.

Why am I mentioning all this?  Because it’s related to the little project I have coming up.  I’m going to take out the original pickup and the preamp, and replace them with a Seymour Duncan SMB-4a MusicMan alnico bass pickup, and a Seymour Duncan STC-3M3 Active Tone Circuit.  I’m well versed in guitar and bass tech work, so I find these types of projects really exciting and fun to do.  Once I get these swapped into the bass, I’m going to start using that bass a whole lot more than I have been, because as I said before, I’ll be able to dial in my tones with it a whole lot better than I could with the stock preamp.

I know it’s probably strange to think about me having a life outside of writing considering how many books I’ve cranked out in the last two years, but believe it or not I do.  It’s not much of one usually, but I find ways of entertaining myself.

Anyway, I got some stuff to do, and then it’s back to the book.  I just wanted to pop in to do a little update on how things are going.

I’ve been taking a break from writing for the past few weeks.  It was a combination of several things that led me to do it, the primary reason though was that I just needed a break.  I’ve spent several weeks binge watching sci-fi shows on Netflix, and I’ve also been editing a cookbook for our neighbor that’s been an absolute nightmare and far more time consuming than I thought it would be when I first agreed to do it.  I think I can get that off of my back this week however, and I’ve pretty much binge watched all the shows I wanted to on Netflix for the moment, so I should be getting back to writing by next week.

On a side note, during this time I’ve stopped being a hermit.  Well, I kinda stopped being a hermit anyway.  I joined a local writers group and I’ve been to a few meetups.  I met some really nice people, which is unusual for me because I’m generally a very introverted person.  I’m finding that I’m quite looking forward to the meetups now that I’ve gotten started with them, and it gives me a chance to have a little social interaction, which is something that’s extremely rare for me.  I’m the sort of a person who doesn’t seek out social interaction, but neither do I shy away from it when it presents itself.  Some social interactions are more pleasurable or welcome than others however.  For example, how eager would you be to spend time with someone you had either nothing, or very little in common with?  With no common interests, it becomes tiresome, and quite quickly turns into an exercise in patience rather than a pleasurable experience, which is why I tend to avoid most social interactions when I can, and why the writers group has been such a breath of fresh air for me.  I’m actually getting to spend time with some very nice people who have a common interest.

Part of the reason I needed a break from writing was a lack of sleep.  When you don’t get enough sleep, you can become quite foggy and confused, which can lead to forgetting important details in what you’ve already written.  Obviously it’s bad to forget such details, because then you can get things out of order, or perhaps give one of your characters knowledge of something they weren’t involved with and shouldn’t have knowledge of.  I really need to be better about getting enough sleep, and I’ve been trying to do just that.  Unfortunately, my mind has other ideas.  It’s one thing to be tired, but to get your brain to shut off, especially during the day, which is my usual sleep time, is practically impossible unless you’ve reached a point of exhaustion where you simply can’t stay awake anymore.  Unfortunately, if you reach that point and then sleep for two hours before you wake up rather than sleeping for a good, solid seven or eight hours, then you spend much if your time with a mental heaviness weighing down on your consciousness that takes away your motivation to do much of anything, and the focus you’d need to do it properly, even if you did somehow manage to find the motivation.

Anyway, things should ease up on me after this week, so I’ll get back to writing the next book.  I’m thinking there’ll be one more book after that, and from there I don’t know.  I may leave it open ended so I can come back to it from time to time when the inspiration hits me, because the next book will be about Jake and Lana’s experiences from right before the invasion up until they reach that town in Utah where book 17 begins.  At least, that’s the plan for now.  Anyway, I’m gonna sit here and browse around while I try to wake up enough to find the motivation to do the stuff I need to get done, so that’s it for now.  I’ll post another update when I’ve gotten back to writing again next week.

Yes, it’s true.  I am an author who smokes a pipe.  Now I just need a leather bomber jacket, an adventurer’s hat and a bottle of whiskey and I’ll have finally achieved my lifelong goal of turning myself into a great big ol’ stereotype.  In all seriousness though, I started smoking a pipe when I was in my early twenties.  I smoked for a while, but then stopped doing it for years before I started smoking the occasional cigar once in a while, mostly because it was less work and took less attention, but there was always something about pipe smoking that for me was far more special than smoking a cigar will ever be.  Now mind you, that’s not to put down cigars at all.  I really enjoy a good cigar, but it’s not a pipe, and it never will be.

So why is smoking a pipe so special?  Well, for one thing, there’s a massive variety of tobacco blends to choose from that are all within a certain price range of one another, whereas with cigars you can go from very cheap to mortgage the house expensive.  That’s an exaggeration of course, but some cigars are extremely spendy for just one smoke.  For around $40 I can get a pound of one of my favorite blends of pipe tobacco and smoke on that for quite some time before I ever even have to think about buying more.

Then there’s the pipes themselves.  There are a wide variety of shapes and styles of pipes.  Some are super fancy, some are more plain, some are made from corncobs, meerschaum, gourd, pear or other woods, though the vast majority of wood pipes are made of briar.  Because there are so many different styles and makers of pipes, collecting them can become a hobby in and of itself.

The almost ritualistic nature of pipe smoking is what appeals to me the most however, and what makes it so completely relaxing.  You load the bowl in a very specific way, light it, tamp it, and then if necessary, you light it again and go from there.  The experienced and attentive pipe smoker can get through an entire bowl on a single light.  The more casual pipe smoker may need to relight it several times as he smokes his way down the bowl, simply because unlike cigarettes, and somewhat unlike cigars, pipes will go out on you if you go too long in between draws.  When you’re done smoking, you clean the bowl and the stem in a very specific way as well to complete the ritual.

The room note of a good pipe tobacco will allow you to enjoy the smoke long after it’s over.  Unlike cigarettes, and unlike some cigars, the room note of various pipe tobaccos can be absolutely enchanting.  To be fair however, there are some blends that leave a room note that’s absolutely ghastly.  For instance, I had a hazelnut blend that I absolutely abhor.  The room note it leaves behind isn’t horrific, but it isn’t overly pleasant either.  If I were to compare it to anything, I would say it leaves the room smelling much like a bowling alley from the 1970s.

You find the special, wonderful smelling blends through trial and error, just as you do with the not so pleasant ones.  I smoke blends from Milan Tobacconists almost exclusively, and I’ve found a wide variety of blends from them that are absolutely wonderful.  My two favorites at the moment are Evening Stroll and Sunset Rum, which is the one I’ll be smoking this evening as I contemplate the next scene in my latest book and how I want it to play out.

The anti-tobacco fascists without exception use tobacco as a general term.  The truth however is that there’s a huge difference between cigarettes, which are meant to be inhaled, and cigar and pipe tobacco, which is not.  The processing of cigar and pipe tobacco as compared to cigarette tobacco is also vastly different.  Pipe and cigar tobaccos are far cleaner and more natural than cigarette tobacco.  So not only are they cleaner and less damaging, but because they’re not inhaled, you can smoke them in relative safety.  A well known YouTuber recently asked his doctor about smoking a pipe occasionally, and he was told that it was just fine, and that he’d likely never encounter any negative effects from it.  That’s another thing about pipes and cigars, is that typically they’re an occasional smoke rather than an all day one, as you see with cigarette smokers.  Even frequent pipe smokers will likely not smoke more than twice a day at the most.  Compare that with a pack a day smoker who’s sucking all that smoke into his lungs.

In the end though, I smoke a pipe for one specific reason that far outweighs any of the others.  I enjoy it, and that’s the only reason that really matters.

“A pipe is the fountain of contemplation, the source of pleasure, the companion of the wise; and the man who smokes, thinks like a philosopher and acts like a Samaritan.”

-Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton