My latest horror story, “The Music of Timothy Shean,” is schedule to appear in Dark Recesses Magazine on August 30th. I love the new look of this magazine. I’m looking forward to being in there, and to sharing this story with readers.
Some music should never be heard by human ears…
My latest horror short story, “The Music of Timothy Shean,” will be published in Dark Recesses Magazine. I’ve only just heard the news and will post again as I hear more about when it will appear. The magazine has recently been restructured and the new team appears to be doing a fantastic job. Their website is slick and very readable, with a number of good features already. I’m excited to be a part of what senior editor Michael Louis Dixon calls the “re-emergence of Dark Recesses Magazine.”
The first draft of my new book, Dark Mage of Midgard, has passed the 50,000 word mark and is just about half finished. The summer writing intensive is really going well, and my plan to write at least 1000 words every day this month is adding up to some really satisfying chapters.
The work this year has been a bit more difficult than last year when I was finishing up Journey to Elara. I think this is because I’m right in the middle of the new book, as well as in the middle book of the trilogy, where the plot is really complex and everything is going badly for our heroes. I should get a big chunk of it done this summer though, and have a first draft by Christmas if things continue to go this well.
It’s almost time for my July writing intensive and I’m gearing up to get a big chunk of my new book written. Last summer I wrote 32,000 words in July and finished the first draft of Journey to Elara. This summer I will be pounding out a big part of book 2: Dark Mage of Midgard, with the goal of having a first draft by Christmas.
So far so good. I did 800 words on Thursday, a 1000 yesterday and today, and I’m looking forward to another good day tomorrow. The story is going great so far, so I’m looking forward to an exciting summer. Come July 1st I’ll really be pouring on the steam.
I do a fair amount of general research on all kinds of things from vulcanism to piano tuning, and I use the internet a lot. Google image search and Wikipedia are awesome for getting up to speed on all kind of topics. But the internet isn’t always everything it’s cracked up to be. Information on almost any subject can be found, but it’s not always easy to locate nor very well organized.
I recently spent a whole day researching 16th and 17th century sailing ships. There were a lot things I wanted, including exterior and interior photographs, layout diagrams, history, as well as technical details and terminology. I spent a lot of time searching all over the internet finding bits and pieces. At the end of the day I took a trip to the bookstore and bought a ten dollar coffee table book on ships that included almost everything I was looking for and was much more satisfying to page through.
The advantage of books are many. Primarily, somebody has already gone through all the trouble of gathering the information and photos, organizing it, and presenting it in a way that’s easy to digest. All this means one can spend more time absorbing information and less time looking for it. Don’t get me wrong, the internet is still cracked up to be a lot, and has its own advantages, like immediate accessability and searchability. For some obscure topics it’s indespensable. But there are times when a trip to the local bookstore or library may get more done with a less hassle.
The first draft of my new book, Dark Mage of Midgard, has passed the 30,000 word mark. I plan to write another 40 to 50 thousand over the summer, and hopefully have a complete first draft by the end of the year.
I’m really happy with the work so far. A lot of exciting things are happening, and I’m looking forward to each new development in the story.
“Crawlspace” appears in SNM Horror‘s June issue, and places 3rd in thier monthly short story contest. The magazine is online now and available for reading. Hope you enjoy it.
What a relief! All the files from my crashed hard drive were recovered and I have gotten them back on an external hard drive and backed them up twice. I still have to get my primary computer fixed, but now at least I can get back to the work of writing without having to worry about the lost chapters.
I am grateful to the people who recovered my data. They are heroes. But no explanation was ever given as to what might have happened to my hard drive. In the end I can only conclude that it was the victim of some evil magic.
I narrowly escaped disaster, but at a great monetary cost. If you have important files that you would pay to get back, or that would just be a major inconvenience to lose, save yourself the trouble and money and make regular backups. With computers the chances are good that sooner or later some evil magic will strike and trust me, you’ll be a lot happier (and wealthier) if you have a current backup.
The saga of the lost chapters continues. My computer hard drive, which suddenly ceased all vital functions several days ago, has been sent to a data retrieval center. I received a call today which I hoped would bring news that my files had been recovered. Instead, I found out that my drive needs to be moved up to Level 3. Apparently whatever they do at Level 1 and Level 2 were not sufficient to retrieve my data.
So now my disk and lost chapter are on their way to Level 3, where I believe they will dismantle the hard drive in a clean room in order to retrieve the data in some other non-specified manner. The time frame for Level 3 is two weeks. It is going to cost the maximum amount, but if all goes well, I will get my chapters.
I am holding out hope. Almost everybody I’ve talked to says that short of catastrophic physical damage it should be possible to retrieve the data. One friend cited a case where the drive had been in a fire and they still retrieved the data. And did you know that Department of Defense only considers data non-retrievable after a hard disk has been completely reformatted seven times. Seven times.
Yes, there is still hope.
My story “Crawlspace” will be appearing in the June issue of SNM Horror Magazine. Find out what happens when a man becomes convinced that there is something horrible living in the crawlspace of his house.
“Crawlspace” was the second story I wrote with some connection to the strange town of Auxerre, Wisconsin. In this case the story’s epigraph is a quote from one Samuel Bjorn of Auxerre University: “The mind, like the world, is a house in which our reality lives, and even though the foundation may be sound, there is a crawlspace between the floor and the ground, often overlooked or forgotten, in which dwell things undreamt of.”
matthewlowes.com 