VIDEO: How I tricked my brain to like doing hard things.
If you are feeling less motivated, part of your energy management strategy might be to curate where your dopamine fixes come from. A little dopamine detox might get your mojo back in gear and refresh your energies.
To boost your productivity, dare to give these strategies a try for a day. Let me know if it helps. And, hey, total honesty? I know this is hard. I had this video bookmarked for a couple of days before I got around to listening to it. That done, I think it makes a lot of sense.
Holly Pop and I wrote three books together: Haunting Lessons, Death Lessons, and FierceLessons. I penned a fourth book in the series, Dream’s Dark Flight. Darkness Visible will complete the series. I’m looking forward to seeing how Tamara Smythe saves the world from monsters from another dimension.
That WIP is on the docket. First up will be This Plague of Days: Contagion. It’s a prequel to the TPOD trilogy that is set entirely in Ireland. I’m also working on a three-book paranormal series with author and podcast king Armand Rosamilia.
Crime thriller recommendation
Armand reached out this week to say how much he’s enjoying “Jesus 4” AKA Resurrection, particularly since there’s an appearance by his protagonist from his hit crime series, Dirty Deeds. It just occurred to me that Armand’s other huge series is Dying Days. Dirty Deeds and Dying Days. Hm. Armand enjoys double Ds in his titles. That sounds on-brand.
If you dig crime novels, check out Dirty Deeds. The premise for his hitman is fresh and interesting. Think Dexter…with more kids and a whole lot of baseball cards.
Aside from planning a vegetable garden to supplement my supply of M&Ms…
I don’t anticipate leaving my blanket fort (where I write and work on audiobooks) until about two weeks post-Vaccination Day. So looking forward to Vaccination Day!
Wee Beasties will kill me if they catch me outside so here’s how I’m spending my days in isolation:
I’m making a concerted effort to drink more water and work out daily. When in need of comfort, I make a mean focaccia. Not too much or too often with the bread. If I do that, why bother with exercise? There’s plenty of ways to get a heavy sweat on without venturing out into the Badlands. These walls are my world.
I figure a lot of dudes go to prison and come out buff. That’s my plan.
How are you spending your time in isolation?
P.S. If you’re looking for something fun to read, AFTER Life: Inferno, the first book in that zombie apocalypse trilogy is free today (April 3, 2020).
She Who Must Be Obeyed (AKA my wife) mentioned that the new move in appropriate terminology is to encourage physical distancing, not social distancing.
With COVID-19 rampaging across Earth, isolating is necessary. However, you need not feel alone. All in this together even if we’re apart, right? Some experts suggest reaching out to three people a day (electronically). Give a call to someone you haven’t spoken to in a while. Check in, especially with the elderly, vulnerable neighbors or family members who are stuck, alone or at risk. Alone doesn’t have to be lonely. Making and maintaining social connections has even been shown to be good for our health. Stress and strife is something we need to tamp down as much as we can.
Don’t know what to say to people going through hard times? Often, all you need do is listen so they feel heard and seen. Other times, you may be able to help people at risk connect to services that can assist them.
Speaking of Reaching Out
Did you know that avid readers of my work have a private Facebook group where I hold forth on the doings of the day? It’s often jokes and occasionally it’s serious. I add excerpts from my work in progress, too.
Example? Here’s a snippet from the This Plague of Days prequel I’m working on now:
Armed only with the cane, Moira rushed toward the screams. She was still weak, but now that she’d survived the Sutr flu, she was determined to fight whatever came next. She did not spare a moment to tell Kevin Laughlin that she would return to his side. The dying have no time for lies.
For another taste from the group, here’s today’s post (a review of sorts):
Hey, Monday, you great looming beast full of threats, coffin nails, and bat wings. And hello, friends.
When we ran out of our addictive Tiger King supply, we watched Wild Wild Country on Netflix. Again, I am amazed at the sheer amount of footage narcissists require. If you know someone who records everything, there’s a good chance they killed somebody or they’re about to do something super shady that should land them in a prison cell.
Wild Wild Country has been out for a while. I’d given it a miss, but it is so watchable after you slog through the first episode. It’s about a cult that started out with high hopes. Then god complexes, bigotry, and government corruption get in the way. A utopian vision in rural Oregon slides from peace and love to AK-47s. It’s disappointing and teaches us a lesson we should have learned a long time ago: Don’t trust the feds.
There is so much fascinating nuance in these tales of downward spirals. I don’t watch a lot of true crime. I imagine that if you binge too much of it, it’s difficult to see the good in humanity. I know I often sound like a cynic, but they say every cynic is a disappointed idealist.
If you dig what I do, this is your invitation to join our happy little group of readers.
There is something about a wounded warrior that is appealing in fiction. Anti-heroes who have dark pasts, who know disappointment and failure, are much more interesting to me than the uncomplicated square-jawed hero.
I relate more to failure than anyone who has it too easy. Batman’s billionaire life would fall apart if someone pulled off his mask just once. To me, Superman’s personal stakes aren’t high enough. Superman’s basically a god. Batman is a rich guy who spent years training his body and mind to be the world’s greatest detective (or a fairly psychotic badass, depending on which vintage of the comics you favor.)
We love a main character with a mysterious past
On my very first night away at university, I found myself in Frosh Week activities. It wasn’t my scene but that first night was special because we watched Casablanca. (No, I’m not that old. It was a retro movie night.) Fun fact: The movie’s original title was Everybody Comes to Rick’s.
There’s a great moment in that movie. Someone asks Rick how he came to find himself in Casablanca. Rick replies, “My health. I came for the waters.”
“The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.”
“I was misinformed.”
Isn’t that a great bit of dialogue? And Bogart delivered the lines so laconically, it’s hilarious. My other favorite exchange is:
“You despise me, don’t you?”
“If I gave you any thought, I suppose I would,”
Ha!
Anyway, we find out about Rick’s romance in Paris in a flashback but he’s kind of a blank slate at first. He’s not going to tell you what you don’t need to know. He’s damaged and flawed but somewhere underneath all that baggage, there’s a person trying to do the right thing. That’s why I love Easy Jack in The Night Man.
Ernest “Easy” Jack has been estranged from his father and he’s a pariah in his home town of Orion, Michigan. On a medical discharge from the army, Easy really just wants to be left alone to train German Shepherds and recover. His eyes are sensitive to sunlight. He’s got a bum knee. He’s weary but when he comes home, he finds his war is not over. An ex-girlfriend in trouble shows up. His dad is a smuggler who gets mixed up with a dirty cop’s dirty business. Complications ensue.
Easy could walk away from trouble but trouble keeps finding him. The truth is, Easy can’t bring himself to walk away. Deep down, he’s not a bad guy but he has to deal with a lot of really bad guys. Dealing with evil on its own terms, you might end up doing things that are beyond the law.Easy doesn’t have a lot of money or resources. He’s got a lot of experience, some cleverness, and a German Shepherd. That’s all he brings to battle. Gotta love an underdog paired up with a dog named Sophie.
That’s why I love The Night Man. I hope you will, too.
You can pick it up in ebook and paperback on Amazon. Please do and if you dig it, please review it.
For just 24 more hours you can pick up three killer crime thrillers for only 99 cents (plus get a sneak peek of Resurrection, A Hit Man Novel). The train is leaving the station. Jump on and hold on tight!
People often ask writers where their ideas come from. My answer, no matter how crazy the premise of the book, is real life. Here’s a look behind the curtain with a couple of my most recent books and why their origins are relevant to you.
Earlier this year, I released The Night Man, a thriller set in rural Michigan. It’s about people who go outside the law because of crushing medical debt and medical bankruptcy. (Think: Breaking Bad but with more German Shepherds.)
I believe medical care is a human right. Insurance agents with profit agendas shouldn’t get in the way of diagnosis and treatment by doctors. Nobody should be condemned to death or poverty because they get a scary diagnosis. No one should have to choose between seeing their doctor or paying rent. I was recently diagnosed with pneumonia and have seen many doctors for several problems over the last few months. I’d hate to think where I’d be if I had to choose between financial security and health!
In the United States, the richest nation on Earth, universal health care is often rejected out of hand because of the stigma of socialism. This is despite the fact that every other First World nation provides some form of universal health care to protect their citizens at lower cost and with better outcomes. Some patients even opt for suicide rather than burden their families with debt. How can this be? How can this still be?
Reality often fuels fiction. Unacceptable and challenging situations provide a context that readers can relate to. Powerful motivations make people do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. So it is in The Night Man. Easy Jack’s father turns to smuggling to try to escape medical debt. Complications ensue and events spiral out of control.
Then came Amid Mortal Words. It is a story I did not intend to write. I have several books in my editorial pipeline and I thought I was done with apocalyptic books for a while. I was supposed to work on revisions to those stories first. However, Amid Mortal Words woke me at 4 a.m. every morning. It was a story that pestered me, insisting on being written. Writing the book was the only way to get some sleep and it turned into a wild story. I like it a lot and I hope you will, too.
The plot to Amid Mortal Words springs from a lot of anger I’ve observed in real life. Everywhere you look on social media, there’s a war on. It is a domestic war in the United States but it is not confined to American borders. Political norms have been shattered. Expectations have been lowered.
The currency in this war is hatred and fear. The consequences often translate into physical violence. Sexism is still thick on the ground and women’s rights are more endangered, not less. When called out for their racism, racists cry foul. Voting rights are suppressed and the democratic system undermined. Climate change isn’t a far off theory. Climate breakdown is here.As one character tells another in Amid Mortal Words, “It’s a fuckle.”
There are solutions to our problems. Some stand in the way. Thinking selfishly and short-term, there are many who believe that saving the planet, practicing empathy and accepting equality is too expensive, too impractical and bad for business. These folks act like the idea that we should care for each other is suspect. Ideals are out the window and it’s every mad dog for himself.
All this in 2019? We could have done better by now. We should have, but for those who are only out for themselves, sexism, racism, and many other ills are a feature, not a bug. It’s not that they don’t know better. It’s that they don’t care.
Personally, I’ve made a transition in my thinking. I used to believe that rational debate and better education would save everyone from the worst of us. I thought good ideas would win because it was in the common interest to have a society that works for everyone. I now accept that, in a strange way, I was underestimating people’s intelligence. Many people who support the actions of Donald Trump knew what they were doing when they elected him. They weren’t all fooled. They knew his long history of sexism and racism. It wasn’t that they were deceived. They got the candidate they wanted. Now the United States is divided, not exactly down the middle but close. The rhetoric is harsh. I’ve heard Alex Jones call for decapitations (and then pull back from that call later, subtly.) I saw a comment on a thread where some nutbag called for a “cleanse” of libtards. There’s a fascinating podcast called It Could Happen Here that gives the odds of a new American civil war serious analysis and consideration. Subversion of the due process of law has turned a lot of conservatives into Banana Republicans.
And no, the vitriol is not equal on both sides. You can point to one or two lies by Obama while Trump is north of 10,000. He’s dangerous and is not in control of all his faculties. One day, assuming we’re lucky, we will look back on these days as very dark and dangerous times. America is not headed toward a constitutional crisis. It’s in one right now. The Democrats are, in general, responding weakly. The Republicans will back their guy right to the brink. It is so sad this devolution is happening because so many of us love America and its people. This is the nation that produced a top-notch space program, Iron Man and Spider-Man for God’s sake!
And so it came to pass that Amid Mortal Words posed the question: If you could get rid of everyone who is making the world a worse place, would you? What if you could do it simply by reading a book or reading the book to someone? And what if there is collateral damage? How many deaths of innocents are acceptable on the way to utopia? I never set out to write a theme. Themes emerge in the writing.Otherwise, the story would devolve into preachy and boring.Though Amid Mortal Words is not a straight-up liberal revenge fantasy. It’s packed with action and mysteries. Respect is given where it is due. There are answers but they aren’t all easy answers. I’m talking about impact. AMW will move you. Some of those answers are going to leave readers thinking a long time after they close the book.
I think there’s something in these books for people no matter where they are on the political spectrum. Heh. I guess I do still hold out some hope that I’ll be able to change some people’s minds by bypassing their fear responses and entertaining them. No matter. You don’t have to agree with me to have a great time staying up all night, pulling your head into my books and turning pages.
I am, first and foremost, in the brain tickle business. My priority is telling an action-packed and interesting story that entertains you. My books can take some very fanciful turns at times but the core ideas are often rooted in reality. That foundation in what’s happening now is what makes the characters real, motivated and relatable. That’s certainly true of Amid Mortal Words and The Night Man. Despite all the violence, twists and mayhem in my books, there’s heart and meaning in the subtext that propels the plot.
I hope you take the time to check them out and enjoy them.
