Davis ran his right hand through his hair and stared at James. “So what you’re saying,” Davis asked, “is that I should break it off?”

James shook his head and held out a hand. “No, man, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m telling you that you need to make this decision on your own. Love is a parasite, you know that. It’s deep in your gut, and in your head, and in every fiber of your being. And you can’t let something like that happen to you unless it’s meant to be. It’s got to be true love.”

“I know,” Davis muttered. He leaned forward in his chair and placed his hands on his head. His eyes fluttered and closed and he grappled with the decision. He looked up. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“You know you wouldn’t be alone for long, Davis. Look at yourself, a guy like you is in high demand.”

Davis nodded and stood up from his chair. His heart pounded and he felt the flutter in his stomach, the butterflies, so many people called it love. He breathed in and tried to make his decision.

“You’re not happy,” James urged. “Love is a two way street. Both of you have to be happy. If you’re not happy, it’s not going to work. It’s just going to gnaw at you from deep down until it gets to be too much. Love has to be a mutual arrangement. Symbiotic.”

“And if it’s not symbiotic?” Davis asked.

“Then it becomes parasitic. It ruins your life. Tears you apart from the inside. You need to break it off if you aren’t happy. Otherwise, it will never work. It could be days, months or years, but eventually that nagging gut feeling will turn into a ripping pain and make you feel like someone is tearing your soul out. This sort of thing will chew at you until there’s nothing left but a husk.”

Davis walked over to the sink and reached down to the prescription bottle. After only a moment of thought, he popped two Niclosamide tablets in his mouth and chewed. The bitter taste filled him and made him shiver.

“It tastes bad, doesn’t it?”

Davis nodded. “It’ll pass soon, right?”

“Yeah,” James answered, “It’ll pass soon.”

#5. Reach Your Audience

There are those out there that will try to argue this point, but let’s get real. Where is a writer without his audience? If there’s not at least one person reading your work, you’re keeping a very weird diary. So that’s where the audience comes in. Through the strategic use of social media networks, you can turn a single audience member into a growing multitude. Each time you talk about your work, share something or provide special insight, you’re reaching out to your audience and inviting them to see you from a closer perspective. Because you’re reaching a wider audience, you’ll strive to do better work, which forces you to improve your craft rather than become stagnant or content with a certain level of success. Additionally, your audience is so much larger than just the people watching you. Your audience includes people watching anyone who takes it upon themselves to share your work. It’s a sort of pyramid scheme, only no one’s asking anyone to mail envelopes containing a dollar to ten contacts.

#4. Honest Critique

Yes, we know your mom loves everything you write. But she also liked the picture you drew of her when you were three – you know, the one where she had green hair and a suspicious lump on her back – so her judgment when it comes to the things you create may be just a bit biased. That’s where your social network comes in. The great thing about social networks is everyone on the Internet is opinionated and they’re not afraid to bang their keyboards into oblivion to tell you exactly what they think about the latest thing you wrote. This is a good thing if your work is fantastic all the time. It’s also a good thing if your work isn’t always fantastic. Sometimes, a writer just needs his delusions smashed so he can return to the blank page and make it better the next time around. Honest critique makes sure you’re always improving.

#3. Inspiration

When you dive into social networks, you quickly find yourself surrounded by like-minded people with hobbies, jobs and personalities very similar to yours. As your network grows, you’ll discover work from other writers that blows your mind. Not only that, it will make you take a look at your work and realize maybe you aren’t doing everything with your concepts or ideas that you could be doing. Not only will the fantastic work you see be inspiring, but the success and morale of fellow writers will keep you inspired as well. Inspiration is an important part of a writer’s job and it’s not always easy to come by. Build your network up with people that inspire you, and hoard the inspiration you get for a rainy day.

#2. Community

You might be married to the idea of the lonely writer, slaving away over a typewriter (really, a typewriter?) while drinking gratuitous amounts of alcohol and just being alone and miserable. It’s just not that way if you dive into the world of social networking. Don’t misquote me – writing comes down to you, and only you, in the end, but it doesn’t have to be the lonely endeavor so many writers I know seem to think it is. You don’t have to be a lonely, miserable, chain-smoking alcoholic hunched over a keyboard in a dark room to be a writer. Social networks are full of communities that help you with your writing process, critique your work, connect you with like-minded writers and so much more. You really get a sense of community if you’ve built your networks strategically and sensibly. Which of course, leads to the final point.

#1. Opportunity

So, you have your network and you’ve connected with your audience, gotten so many opinions on your work you just don’t know what to do, found so much inspiration and dived into a community setting with other writers. What’s left to do? Look for opportunities. That’s right. Take a look around at your own network and start asking around in your little community that’s formed around your network. You’ll find tons of people that have stumbled on opportunities through social networks that completely changed their careers. I’m not saying you’re going to become a best seller with a well-placed tweet, but you can find career opportunities, publishers, agents, editors and other writers. Each contact you make with someone in your network could lead you to placing a story in a publication or something bigger like giving you the in to get your manuscript in front of an agent. You can find collaboration partners, editing help, graphic design deals and so much more that could push you to the next level as a writer. All you have to do is be open to it, and know that the opportunities are out there so you recognize them when they fall into your lap.

The cover to my upcoming collection of short stories. More information to come soon.

Snatch looked up from the dirty ground and stared into the gray clouds. The little voice in his ear irritated him and the familiar headache quickly made its return. The world wobbled beneath him and the sky started to cry.

Go ahead, Snatch. She’ll follow you into the woods if you ask her.

Sounds scraped against Snatch’s eardrums. The dead grass swayed in the field around Snatch, where he sat. His dirty coveralls smelled of musk, a sweaty, filthy man’s musk. The smell of his sweat burned his nostrils and the stale taste of his mouth left him feeling sick. The whispers in his head grew more persistent.

Just ask her to follow you. Her head will snap open like an egg under a truck tire.

Snatch shook his head and clutched his ears. The dirt and grime made his flesh greasy and gritty; his fingers pushed the dirt and sweat around to create little balls of dark grit, beads of disgust. He pulled a deep breath into his barrel-shaped chest and squeezed his eyes closed.

“I love Danielle,” he murmured.

No you don’t. Don’t lie to yourself.

“I do,” Snatch insisted. He rocked back and forth in the field and looked at the distant farmhouse, where it stood at the other side of the field, nearly falling in on itself. “I don’t want her to suffer.”

Why? You suffer.

“She doesn’t have to,” Snatch whispered into the field as droplets of water splashed down around him with growing frequency.

Yes she does. She really does.

­Snatch shook his head and dropped his hands down into the dirt. On his left, his hand fell over the rough wood handle of his sledgehammer. Tiny particles of wood stabbed at the rough, calloused hand. Snatch wrapped his fingers around the handle and tightened his grip. Drops of rain splashed down and turned the dry Louisiana dirt into tiny pools of mud, each time, sending tiny brown specks on Snatch’s skin.

The ground shifted beneath Snatch and he swayed under the low canopy of clouds. His eyes rolled back into his head until they hurt. He squeezed his eyes shut and steadied himself against the unstable earth. Again, he should his head.

You know what you need to do.

Snatch’s ears buzzed with a soft hum that originated inside his head, like the sound of a swarm of flies, each one bouncing off windows, all inside his skull. He felt sick. His stomach churned and his heart flopped about in his ribcage, a lost vessel on a choppy sea. His lungs choked and forced air out in a rush.

“I love her, though,” Snatch croaked. His words had no air, no force. The words barely made it by his cracked, dry lips.

Your love for Danielle is unnatural, disgusting. Forget about Danielle.

“I can’t,” whispered Snatch.

You can. You will. You must.

Snatch’s skull seemed to swell and try to split out of its skin cover. He groaned in pain and felt the pressure growing behind his eyes. “I won’t do it,” he said.

You know you will, Snatch. You always give in.

“I can’t hurt Danielle. Please.” Snatch tightened his grip on the hammer at his side. Even sitting, the world seemed to jerk back and forth, like someone pulling a rug from beneath him. The field was a merry-go-round, spinning faster and faster -faster and faster- until he couldn’t take it anymore. He lurched forward and planted both hands firmly against the dry field ground. A rush of chunks and fluid pushed up from his stomach, into his chest, and out of his mouth. It spewed forward with force and splattered the ground with a sour mix of food and acid. Tiny chunks of chewed food stuck to his lips. He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and felt the grittiness of his teeth with the tip of his fat tongue.

It will only get worse. Everything will get worse.

“How do I make it stop?” Snatch asked no one at all.

You know.

Snatch swayed and fell onto his side, into the dry grass and dirt of the large, dead field. His heart rattled against his bones. His stomach flipped and flopped like an epileptic trapeze artist at a cheap circus. His legs burned and he could not feel his feet. His fingers twitched.

“I don’t want to do it,” Snatch whispered into the wet, humid air.

Thunder smashed through the clouds like a rock through a window. Rain ripped through the sky in a torrential fall. Lightning cut the black clouds apart.

A storm is coming, Snatch.

“It’s already here,” Snatch said.

A different storm.

Snatch rolled onto his back and stared into the sky, as rain poured down and drenched him. He reached out and grabbed the wet handle of his sledgehammer. He shivered, even in the humid heat of the Louisiana day.

“I have no choice,” Snatch said. He shuddered and sat up. His muscles screamed at him and jerked in defiance. His stomach clenched down and his throat burned. Each raindrop slammed into him with the force of a flying bullet.

You never did.

“I never had a choice,” Snatch muttered. He pushed himself away from the ground and stood in the rain, in the field. He stared at the old shack, the falling farmhouse in the rain.

Go get her, boy. Go get Danielle.

Snatch stumbled his way toward the farmhouse on the far side of the field. Rain ran down his face and his head protested the movement. His brain collided with his skull with each step. He hefted the sledgehammer up to his shoulder and clenched his teeth. This was the only way to slow it down. This was the only way to make it stop, even if temporarily. He stalked closer to the farmhouse.

A storm is coming.

I hope you can read this letter from way up there, so high, held in place by so much hair product, perched atop that head, starting right above that olive-skinned forehead. My fascination burns deeply in my soul, down in the meaty mass of my beating heart, driving me to write to you and express my deepest thoughts. You are quite the wonder – a true wonder that boggles my mind, as I’m sure it does for others.

The head you grow upon is considered an expert in the Ancient Alien hypothesis. I can easily see why. Earthly hair care products have not yet reached sufficient technological advancement to allow you to defy the established laws of physics in the way that you so callously do. You stand high, each tendril of your thickly doctored, full-bodied self thrusting up like a middle finger to science, and to the very Universe you inhabit. If anything, you are significant evidence in favor of the very theories in which your keeper, Mr. Giorgio Tsoukalos, is such an avid proponent.

You defy my expectations with each appearance you make on your show, Ancient Aliens on History. (And let’s stop the pretense. It is YOUR show.) Each time the camera is on you and Mr. Tsoukalos, you seem to reach higher and higher, and will one day dominate the camera frame, I’m sure. What is it that you are reaching for? Is there a bottle of damaged hair conditioner up there? Or are you trying to feed your addiction for hair product by reaching for a hidden container of mousse or hair spray? Perhaps it is something more dastardly.

Is Mr. Tsoukalos abusing you? Is this the reason that you are struggling to stretch higher and higher, in hopes that one day you will separate from your keeper’s scalp? I doubt that’s the reason. You look like you’re having too much fun to be in any real danger, which is a surprise, since one look at you lets everyone know that you are covered in hair product and quite possibly surrounded by a lurking, low-hanging fog of hair spray with such concentration that a single static spark could prove disastrous. However, I’m sure you’ve considered the potential dangers before you allowed yourself to begin your schedule of hair products that is your own version of substance abuse.

You have some sort of strange power, or ability. I won’t go so far as to say you have a mystical ability to remain alive despite all the abuse you endure, because I prefer to remain seated in the realm of science. No one can deny your standing power. Somehow, each time you appear on camera, you seem to be higher and stronger like an incredible shape-shifter. In a single episode of your show on History, you seem to grow several inches throughout each time the camera lands on you and your keeper, so Mr. Tsoukalos can make his statement or observation about an ancient artifact. This is amazing. You would be incredible even without your amazing growing powers. This doesn’t even include your shape-shifting abilities. Again, in a single episode of Ancient Aliens on History, you somehow change your form from each camera shot. At times, you are reserved and classic; you seem to be a strange semi-bouffant style cap atop Mr. Tsoukalos’ head. At other times, you seem to be screaming toward the sky with the form of hundreds of tentacles, reaching for the stars, each tendril frozen in place as if a tangled mass of squids trapped on the wrong end of Medusa’s stare. This is impressive. You change your form in one episode more than I change my underwear in a week.

Why are you standing so high? You act like someone asked a question, and you know the answer. Your tendrils stretched so high seem to shout “Pick me, pick me!” Are you the needy kid in the classroom waiting for the teacher to call your name?

No. That can’t be it. You give off a nice vibe of arrogance and “no-shits-to-be-given-today.” You’re comfortable doing what it is that you do. You’re comfortable growing like a monument, and barking for a position as the eighth wonder of the world.

So that leaves us with no answer, but everything must have a reason. Why do you stand so high? Is there a reason you stand so firm, so strong, with the ability to withstand hurricane force winds, and the foundation to survive unimaginable earthquakes? Are you trying to be the physical representation of Mr. Tsoukalos’ strong convictions and beliefs?

That must be it.

You stand so strong, against the wind and laws of physics, persevering in the face of constant abuse from overused hair products, harsh production lights and countless other troubles you are sure to have seen. This is true conviction, a true dedication to your art, just as Mr. Tsoukalos stands so firmly against skeptics and naysayers.

Stand high and grow on, hair.

Stand high and grow on.

Sincerely,

Elijah Toten

If you’re a writer planning to self-publish your book as an e-book, then the new services I’m offering at Totencreative on a freelance basis are meant for you. Before you release your book as an e-book, it needs to be properly formatted to display correctly on the device its intended for. While I can format your book for whatever platform you intend to release for, the service I’m most excited about is the formatting service directed toward writers with the intention of releasing through Smashwords.

Smashwords is a great way to publish your book as an e-book and reach readers. To reach the most readers, you really want your book to qualify for the Smashwords Premium Distribution, which is the list Smashwords distributes to major retailers. Before this can happen, your book needs to be formatted to their style guide so it will be properly processed by their special “Meatgrinder” software. It then needs to pass the Smashwords AutoVetter, which checks your book automatically to make sure it meets certain requirements. The book then needs to pass a hands-on inspection.

With a style-guide reaching almost 24,000 words, this could easily be intimidating to someone like you, wanting to release an e-book, but it doesn’t have to be. For $24.99, I will format your book for you, and guarantee it will pass the AutoVetter. If it doesn’t pass, just send it back and I will fix it. This is an affordable way to make sure your book gains inclusion to the premium distribution catalog as quickly as possible.

For only $24.99, you get:

In addition to formatting services for e-book authors, I also design book covers. Contact me through Totencreative today, or email me directly at authoreit (at) gmail.com.

The past couple of weeks have been busy ones for me, that’s for sure. A couple jobs done, an ebook released and so much more – my life has turned into a constant revolving door, but I never step out of it. I just keep revolving.

So what’s been keeping me busy? Plenty.

I’ve been working on a website, logo and various book covers for Chronovators Press, to get that site up and running. It’s been tons of fun, but a good bit of work too.

Chronovators Press Screenshot

Chronovators Logo

In addition to the Chronovators press, I’ve been working with author Kaycee M. Jett (the pseudonym of someone I know very well) to design a new book cover for her book, The Ordinary Housewife.

The Ordinary Housewife

Now, when Kaycee saw this cover attached to the email I sent her, I can only guess that she was amazed and said something like:

That Elijah fellow is amazing. This book cover is exactly what I pictured in my head when I asked him to design it, and here it is. Plus, he has a great head of hair.

Amen to that. I do have a great head of hair. The next step in this project is to format her book and prep it for release through Smashwords.com.

On to me, and this blog.

I’m currently writing several short stories, along with several installments of the upcoming serial, The Pennypincher. I’m hoping to release the first installment around the first of September, so stay tuned!

The ebook version contains all thirty original installments of the web serial in edited, tightened and polished form while remaining true to the story and just as insane as before.

From the Smashwords description:

Edgar Snatch is a troubled man living in a Louisiana farmhouse with his mother. Bothered by visits from law enforcement, an odd old farmer, a talking dead mouse and thoughts of a girl named Danielle, Edgar just wants to be left alone.

Between the visits from an old farmer that claims to be the Grim Reaper, the talking corpse of a recently-deceased mouse, persisting thoughts of a girl named Danielle and local law enforcement checking in on Edgar and his mother, the quiet little farmhouse he’s grown accustomed to is crumbling around him.

A Man Called Edgar Snatch is available from Smashwords in a variety of formats for your e-reader or mobile device for only $1.99. Step into the unstable mind of Edgar Snatch.

DO NOT REMOVE THIS NOTICE BY ORDER OF THE US GOVERNMENT. THIS NOTICE MUST BE DISPLAYED IN A PROMINENT LOCATION WITHIN YOUR PLACE OF BUSINESS. THE NORTH AMERICAN CENSUS AND BOOKKEEPING BUREAU THANKS YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION IN THIS MATTER. THIS NOTICE IS PROPERTY OF THE NORTH AMERICAN CENSUS AND BOOKKEEPING BUREAU. DO NOT DESTROY THIS NOTICE.

Read The Penny Pincher.

DO NOT REMOVE THIS NOTICE BY ORDER OF THE US GOVERNMENT. THIS NOTICE MUST BE DISPLAYED IN A PROMINENT LOCATION WITHIN YOUR PLACE OF BUSINESS. THE NORTH AMERICAN CENSUS AND BOOKKEEPING BUREAU THANKS YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION IN THIS MATTER. THIS NOTICE IS PROPERTY OF THE NORTH AMERICAN CENSUS AND BOOKKEEPING BUREAU. DO NOT DESTROY THIS NOTICE.

Read The Penny Pincher.