Blog – Kit Campbell Books

An Old Game

Hey ho, squiders, when was the last time I posted on all the days I’m supposed to in a week? WHO KNOWS

(In case it wasn’t clear–and it’s probably not–I post on Tues/Thurs every week.)

(In theory.)

I’m being a little more abstract with my morning pages lately, partially because sometimes it’s a pain in the butt to look up a prompt before I get going, and partially because, yeah, starting fifty million stories and finishing none of them may not be the best practice in the long run. So I’m doing some stream of consciousness, some writing exercises, and some brainstorming in addition to the stories.

But doing so reminded me of a game I used to play in middle and high school.

I started writing around when I was 8, and enjoyed a period of popularity in middle/high school when I had a series of short stories about the Evil Teachers’ Association (the ETA), all of which were punny and silly, and sometimes included actual teachers (with their permission).

(For example, there were pi fighters, which you couldn’t get an exact lock on.)

(Oh, yeah, these took place in space.)

(The ETA got a bit distressingly popular. I stopped sharing them outside my friends’ group when I found someone else had posted them online without my knowledge or permission.)

So, flush with success and the admiration of my peers, I started this game. “Tell me anything, and I can write a story about it.” My friends would come up with increasingly strange things (though the only one coming to mind right now is rotten tacos), and I would go off and then present them with a couple pages of story a few hours later.

I got writing practice. My friends got a fun story. Win win for all. As far as I know, no one ever disliked one of these stories. Or, at least, they were too kind to say so.

(In retrospect, this game is probably how I was victorious at the Chopped Writing Contest I did at MileHiCon a few years ago, despite the fact that I was going up against much more highly decorated authors, including a Hugo Award winner. It was set up like the Chopped cooking show, where each round we got new story elements that had to be incorporated into the story we had written previous rounds. I don’t remember everything, but there were definitely nuns, a space elevator, and Willy Wonka.)

The changes in the morning page routine reminded me of this game. I’m not sure this is a useful skill in the long run (unless one is routinely doing Chopped-style writing contests. Maybe for money) but it is, indeed, one I have.

I may start asking the kids for random ideas, here and there, and add the game back into the routine.

We shall have to see.

Hope your week/month is going well, squider, and I’ll see you next week!

For Some Reason September Feels Like a Ray of Hope

September books: 0/7

Hey-ho, squiders! Hope you’re doing well.

I’m feeling pretty darn good. Like…September rolled in, and all my goals were suddenly achievable again.

Which is ridiculous, because literally nothing has changed except the label on the calendar. I’m still working two jobs and have all the other life things going on that have been causing me stress.

I believe we’ve talked before about how time is arbitrary, and about how there’s really no reason to put any sort of stock in starting new projects or new things in a new year, or a new month, or even a new week (hence why so many resolutions fail).

So there’s no reason to be suddenly optimistic. Yet, the hope remains, that we shall get on top of things and be productive once more.

Maybe we’re getting used to the chaos? So the overwhelm isn’t quite so bad and everything feels calmer, even if it’s not.

I’ve once again laid out my goals for the month. Mostly these are the same from month to month–some number of books to read, a couple of Steam games that I will probably not play in favor of some other game instead, some writing goals, some life goals.

The way these typically go is I fixate on a couple of them, then occasionally remember the rest exist and try to stuff those in for a few days (with varying success), and then forget and go back to whatever I was fixating on again.

Again, no reason to suspect that this month will go any differently than the last three.

And yet…maybe it will?

It can’t hurt to hope.

See you later, squiders!

The Morning Pages are Falling Apart (Like the Rest of My Life)

~~July~~August books: 4/6 (Your Perfect Year, which I got for free from Amazon at some point and started reading, like, two years ago. Translated from German.)

Ah, squiders. I opened this to write this post days ago. Alas.

The two jobs continue. And shall for another three weeks. Yesterday I had to do both in person, which was a lot, but it was nice to see my old coworkers and check in with them face to face.

(The commute for the old job was quite long, which was one of the reasons I switched. I can–and have been–walking to my new job. Walking takes less than a third of the time it took to drove to the old job.)

The first two weeks of doing both jobs, I went to my new job, and then came home and immediately jumped onto the old job. But it’s an awkward time period, because while, in theory, I have about an hour and half between the end of the new job and when I need to pick up my oldest from school, sometimes I have to stay later at the new job. Trying to stuff the old job in that time period wasn’t working great, so this week I’m trying something new, which is new job -> errands and chores and stuff -> child retrieval -> old job. That break between the two seems to be helping with my mental health a bit.

But I suspect a lot of the stress boils down to the complete upheaval of my routine, and things just need time to adjust.

Writing hasn’t really been happening, as we talked about, though I have been continuing to send out queries for Book 1. That is horribly depressing, but I did go into it knowing the genre was going to be a hard sell in the current market. I think I’m up to 30ish rejections?

It’s been about a decade since I last queried, and I’ve noticed different trends this time around. Seems like a lot of agents go through fairly quickly and reject whatever they can, and in general I’m surviving those cuts. And they’ll do rounds of rejections, and I’m staying afloat through a lot of them. So I suspect my submission package is fine, and my writing is fine, but they can’t see what to do with epic fantasy right now.

A rejection is still a rejection though.

Even the morning pages have taken a hit through the double job/school starting/everything else madness.

Here are the stats:

June: 28 of 29 days (Started the whole project on the 2nd)
July: 24 of 31 days (worse than I was remembering)
August: 17 of 28 days (also I found an entry I labeled as “April,” so doing well)

Obviously there are 3 more days in August and perhaps I shall do morning pages on all of them! But 20/31 is still less than 24/31.

Admittedly, like we talked about…last week? that email I read threw me a little bit off my groove re: morning pages, but the fact of the matter is that I am still enjoying them, and it’s good to be getting some writing done, no matter how small. I’m switching in some writing exercises as opposed to just prompts, so in theory we’re learning and not stagnating or whatever the scaremongering was on about.

Also pondering my next steps once I finish with the old job and have my afternoons back. Part of me wants to leave the World’s Edge revision on pause. If you remember, the reason we moved onto World’s Edge was because it’s same world, same genre, as Book 1, and hence we would look attractive to a potential agent who could say, ah, here is a consistent writer who we can count on to write more in the same genre. (A lie, but I can pretend.) But now I find myself wondering, if epic/high fantasy really is not selling right now, if I shouldn’t switch to an adjacent genre and see if that works better.

Low fantasy and magical realism seems to be on every agent’s wishlist. And one of the projects I’ve been poking very lightly for the past month, which is the sequel to my story “Drifting” in the Under Her Protection anthology, would fit those genres. It’s modern day, modern world, except the MC’s grandmother lives in an old family home that’s been there long enough that the land–and the magic–have gotten into it.

I’ve written part of the sequel before, but I think making the character younger (right now she’s 23ish, graduated from college and failing at adulting, but like, 16, 17, so I can move it into young adult) might work better. And I had a magic system epiphany while walking to the first job, and it’s always good when you know how magic works in your world.

And it’s been a while since I’ve drafted a new story. Hallowed Hill came out in 2022, and that’s the last full-length work I’ve done that wasn’t a revision of some sort.

Pondering, pondering. Making potential plans for when we’re out of survival mode.

Hope you’re doing all right in your neck of the woods. See you next week!

Shannara Readthrough: Angel Fire East

August books: Still 3/6 (also in the middle of 3, because I am a mess)

(Also as a note, I read the last book in this a year ago. May need to speed things up a bit.)

If you’re new ’round these parts, let me tell you about the Shannara series. This is a high fantasy-esque series of many books, and was my introduction to the fantasy genre through The Wishsong of Shannara. And here we are, 30 years later, still hanging out in fantastic waters. The original trilogy of Sword (1977), Elfstones (1982), and Wishsong (1985) is very much high fantasy, but the world is actually ours, after some unspecified apocalypse.

Terry Brooks, the author, has completed the story (in theory–I feel like every time I check there’s something else out) (oh good lord he put out a new book in MARCH)–okay, he’s NOT completed the story but we’re slowly working our way through it anyway.

(…he’s also apparently handed the series off to a younger author. I may need to rethink this whole thing. TERRY WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME)

ANYWAY.

Angel Fire East (published 1999) is the last of the Word and the Void trilogy (the other two books being Running with the Demon and A Knight of the Word), which are interesting because while they are now included in the Shannara chronology, they were not intended to be when they were written. As such they don’t really match any of the later books, and the magic systems in place here do not make for an easy progression into the magic in the later Shannara books. I am hoping that as we get a little farther into the series, especially the next few books, Armageddon’s Children and the Genesis of Shannara series (both written after the Word and Void trilogy), that everything will be come clear, or at least make some sort of sense.

The whole trilogy is a much quieter fantasy trilogy than many, with explorations of trauma, grief, homelessness, addiction, and family, on top of the occasional demon battle and magic and that sort of thing. Like the other two books in the series, Angel Fire East follows Nest Freemark and John Ross, now ten years after the events of A Knight of the Word. Nest has returned to her hometown of Hopewell (fictional, but somewhere in Illinois) after quitting her Olympic and world-record setting running career, afraid that she is losing control of her magic. John Ross has managed to catch a gypsy morph, some sort of wild magic, that might be able to turn the tide in the never-ending war between the Word (good) and the Void (evil).

I will say that the story does not feel finished, at the end of Book 3 here. There’s throughlines that would make sense had the original plan been to write a second Word and Void trilogy. I wonder where exactly, between Angel Fire East (1999) and Armageddon’s Children (2006), the decision happened to move the books into the Shannara universe, and what the impetus was. (As of 2003, when Mr. Brooks wrote his Sometimes the Magic Works memoir, they were still separate.) I hope that those throughlines are addressed in Armageddon’s Children or I will be annoyed. But also interesting is the lingering cloud of the apocalypse. The book itself implies that, perhaps (though maybe unlikely) it can be warded off, as it has been since the beginning of humanity, but since I’ve read some of the later (chronological) books, I know it happens.

If nothing else, the Shannara series is an interesting look at how a universe can evolve. From basic high fantasy in the original trilogy to a millennia-sweeping dystopian epic. He tends to write in 3s and 4s, jumping back and forth across the chronology. As a fantasy author myself, that sounds like a bit of nightmare, always having to retcon things to make them work, or invalidating bits of earlier stories. But I can also see the appeal. You’ve already put all the work into the world–why not play in it as much as you can?

I’m sure there’s a marketing element to it as well. Terry Brooks has written other series, but Shannara is what he is known for, and what people keep coming back for.

So! I wonder if I would have enjoyed these books better if I hadn’t been trying to tie them into the rest of the Shannara mythology. Or maybe I wouldn’t have read them at all. They’re not my normal types of fantasy, though I did enjoy each of them.

Next is Armaggedon’s Children, whenever I get to it. Hopefully sooner than a year.

Read the Shannara books, squiders? Any thoughts?

Pondering MileHiCon

Evening, squiders! I’m going mad but on we blindly stumble.

July books: 3/6 (Angel Fire East)

If you guys have been here for a while, you know that I attend MileHiCon every October and have for about a decade or so. It’s a lovely convention, specifically focused on science fiction and fantasy literature, and they let me do panels and feel like a real author for a weekend, and I’ve been on panels with Connie Willis and Carrie Vaughn and others, and once I defeated a Hugo-award-winning author in a writing contest.

I look forward to it every year.

But this year, I find myself… not motivated. They’ve moved the convention from about 20 minutes away to 40. Generally I stay at home and drive into the convention as convenient, but 40 minutes is a lot, which gives me less time at the convention itself merely from commuting. (It doesn’t behoove me to stay there. I have responsibilities at home that I need to take care of before/after convention stuff.)

Secondly, while it is always near Halloween, it is actually on top of Halloween this year. (Oct 31-Nov 2) Which means it’s almost not worth it to go that day at all. Generally the convention doesn’t start until about 3 in the afternoon, and I would need to come home to go trick or treating with the kids. And my daughter’s Cub Scout Pack is doing an overnight at a local zoo on Nov 1, which means that I will also have to leave early that day.

It’s getting to the point in the year where I need to coordinate an author table and sign up for which panels interest me. But I’m so tired. I know part of that is the job transition (and school starting up) and it’s possible that by the end of October I will be back to myself.

But I find myself wondering if, maybe, I should just take the year off.

MileHiCon is good for me, and I do enjoy it. I have friends I only see there, it helps keep the imposter syndrome quiet, I tend to get work done around everything else because I’m on my own, and I do sell books and generally do well for myself.

But none of that is going to fall apart if I take a year off. And perhaps the combination of farther drive + unfamiliar layout + bad weekend + stress is a good reason to do so.

And I can always perhaps go for a day if I’m feeling better and I have the time once the convention arrives.

But it feels weird–always does–to not take an opportunity that is available for me. And there is a part of me that says “suck it up, do as much as you can, and deal otherwise.”

What do you think, squider? Sit it out for one year? Suck it up? Lie on the floor and take a nap?

New Fear Unlocked

August books: 2/6 (The Tea Master and the Detective)

Well, squiders. The last few weeks have been rough, as we talked about on…Wednesday? But at least I’m mostly keeping up with my morning pages, so I’m getting some writing done. Right?

RIGHT??

Maybe not, apparently.

Like I suspect many writers, I am always looking to learn new things. I take occasional classes, watch webinars, read blogs, and subscribe to perhaps too many writing newsletters. I sign up for challenges and try new things and all of that madness.

ANYWAY one of the writing newsletters I subscribe to is run by Hope Clark, a mystery writer, and is called FundsForWriters. She talks about her own writing and what she’s up to, hosts guest posts from other writers, and lists contests, grants, and places you can submit your writing.

A few weeks ago she had a link to get a free copy of the Story Grid, which sounds familiar. Maybe I looked at it before? Maybe I got it confused with Story Engineering, which is the most useful writing book I’ve ever read.

(I’ve done some research because I definitely took pictures of the book in question I was thinking about, and yes, I’ve already read The Story Grid once. Ha. It was a LOT of work but it did seem like some of the process would be useful.

I read the book four years ago and have not implemented any of it.)

Anyway, I clicked the link for the free copy, so of course now I am on the newsletter list, because this is how these things go.

And the very first email he sent out was like, 5 Things That Will Make You a Worse Writer or something along those lines.

And do you know what #3 or so was?

WRITING MORE.

His point was that if you are writing just to write without getting feedback and trying to fix the things you’re doing wrong, you’re just going to ingrain the things you are doing wrong as habit.

Which, yes, fair. I can see that.

So now I’m super paranoid about the morning pages. “What terrible habits am I ingraining?” I ask myself every time I break my notebook open. “Am I training myself to be boring? Predictable?”

Which, like, I’ve been writing for a long time. In general I know what my weaknesses are, and also that those weaknesses are almost all fixable in the revision phase. (The pacing was a major issue, and I have taken steps to fix that at this point.) I am published and my stuff is generally well-received. I am a competent writer by an objective standpoint.

But, still, in some corner of my mind, there’s a voice whispering, “You currently are competent, but maybe you’re training yourself to be worse.”

Anything’s possible, I suppose.

But I do find myself in a weird place. I like doing the morning pages. And in this time of upheaval, it’s nice getting some writing done even if it’s nothing serious. (I’m over halfway through the notebook, which is a bit exciting in of itself. I’ve never filled up a notebook before. I may read through it, when it’s full, and see if there’s anything worth finishing and polishing.) But now there is that voice in the back of my head, wondering if I’m doing more damage than good.

And, of course, logically, the point of said email was to sell whatever class or book or what have you, and adding that seed of doubt is supposed to get you to buy whatever it is. I know that.

Maybe it’s just because things are so weird in general that it’s taken up permanent residence in my head.

Sigh.

Anyway, squiders, how are you?

Odds and Ends

Good grief, squiders, I don’t mean to be abandoning you for a WHOLE WEEK. This job transition has been a lot, and to top it off, school is starting right in the middle of it.

(I told my old job I’d work remotely 5-8 hours a week to help with transition and training and doing the stuff that only I do while they replace me–or don’t–and this was a Mistake. It’s rough going from one job immediately to the next, and it feels like the people at my old job aren’t quite sure what to do with me, for whatever reason. I mean, it’s been like three days.)

I’m super behind on all my not-work things. I need to get my den meetings scheduled for the year (it’s our Arrow of Light year so we only have six months to earn rank before the girls cross over into Scouts BSA) but I’m still working through the requirements, and writing/anything creative has essentially fallen into the depths of “maybe someday.”

I did finish going through all my idea files (last Thursday, and yet…) so I have no excuse to not go ahead and do the outlining portion of those stories aside from mental fatigue. Fingers crossed that I can get to that soon. Maybe tomorrow? I’m hoping at least Saturday if nothing else.

Also having some issues keeping up with the critique marathon (doing my critiques). There’s one more week after this, but I think I may quit after this week. I’ve gotten to The End this week though I feel a bit bad about peacing out once I’ve gotten my stuff done, but I think it will be best for my mental health.

I’ve managed to get a few queries out this month, but not my normal goal of 5, and it’s like pulling teeth.

While these last few weeks (last month?) have sucked from an anxiety and Getting Things Done point of view, I do think things will be better in the long run. I do like my new job, and it feels more comfortable in many ways than my old one. I can walk to work, which should help my health in general (though it was 95 degrees when I walked home today). It will take a few weeks for school to get into its routine (and the kids to start their after school activities) and for me to work through doing both jobs, but then I should have a structure to my day that allows things to get done.

Positive thoughts, squiders. Positive thoughts.

How are you doing? Things treating you well?

Why is Everything So Violent These Days?

Morning, squiders. I did my training for my new job yesterday, and I have one week left in-person at my old job (I’m going to support them for a further month part-time and remotely). Weird times.

August book goal: 6 (currently zero)

(And the goal shall remain 6 until we catch back up.)

I didn’t actually get to go to the coffee shop on Friday, but I did have some coffee at the Cub Scout camp my youngest and I went to over the weekend, and there is literally no difference between having coffee and not having coffee. So yay, I guess.

Anyway.

Why is it so hard these days to find a genre television show that isn’t ungodly violent? We recently started watching Fallout, as we’ve played at least some of Fallouts 1-4 (and spent like 100+ hours on Fallout 3), and Holy Moly. I spent half the first episode with my hands over my eyes.

I only made it through two seasons of Game of Thrones because it was too violent for me (and a lot of that violence was sexual violence, which I decided I just didn’t need in my life).

Spouse wants to watch Last of Us but we played those games too and honestly the games (ESPECIALLY Last of Us 2) were almost too much for me, so I imagine the show will only be worse.

Star Trek is the only saving grace right now.

This seems to be a trend right now in science fiction and fantasy shows. Gritty, violent. Like we have to show how awful the world is/could be or we can’t be taken seriously.

Why? Aren’t things terrible enough with having to go through that sort of thing in our “escapist” media? Why can’t we have hope and optimism and your average video game levels of gore?

Like, we’re playing Final Fantasy XVI right now. (Beautiful game, story is making less and less sense as it goes on.) We’re fighting things all the time, but aside from a little bit of blood in the cutscenes (flecks on the main characters after a big battle, or if someone gets run through or some such) there’s hardly any.

Although, maybe that’s part of it. Final Fantasy XVI is obviously a video game. Its characters are stylized and nowhere near the uncanny valley territory that some newer games get into. Maybe the same level of blood that is in the game would freak me out when translated to a live action television show.

I don’t know. It’s just wearying. I don’t want to watch people get killed or their limbs shot off or their heads bashed in.

Any recommendations for recent scifi/fantasy shows that aren’t so focused on violence? Thanks, squiders.

I Haven’t Had Coffee in Four Days

July books: Still 4/6, alas

Afternoon, squiders. I haven’t had coffee in four days.

And you know what? It has changed absolutely nothing.

(I had some pain around my lower sternum, and I thought it was stomach pain, and I’ve run into issues with coffee before. But it turns out it is NOT my stomach. My sternum hurts. Maybe I ran into something.)

I’m immune to caffeine, so having coffee or not doesn’t make it easier or harder to get going for the day. I just like coffee.

Arguably, I am addicted to coffee (as we discussed in February of last year) (and since that post we’ve acquired a Nespresso which is Highly Dangerous). I like it, it’s comforting, and I associate it with writing even though more often than not these days I drink it while I am not writing.

I also associate it with writing with friends, although I have no more writing friends these days. I had a group I met with once a week up until my oldest was about one, and then I switched to a discussion group instead, but both of those groups are dead at this point.

It is hard to find people to just write with, these days. At least for me. I know there are some out there, but the times are never good. They all meet in the evenings or on the weekends, and I’ve got to do kid or family stuff in that time frame. Nobody wants to write at 1 pm on Mondays.

But seriously…I would have expected some withdrawal symptoms or something. I maybe had a headache on Tuesday, but, also, I’ve got a bit of a cold, so maybe it’s just related to that. No change in energy levels or anything.

At this point it’s a bit of experiment. Do I miss coffee? Absolutely. But it is not as much as an urge as I would have thought. Like, I’m not going through my day craving it.

I do think I will go to my favorite coffee shop tomorrow and get my favorite drink, which is called a Florentine. (I’ve done a web search, and there’s fifty million variations called a “Florentine,” but at my coffee shop it’s coffee with a bit of milk and chocolate syrup. So you get that chocolate fix without all the sugar/calories a mocha gives you.) See if there are negative aftereffects.

But it is good to know that if it came down to it, I could give up coffee.

How do you feel about coffee, squiders?

Still in Upheaval Mode

July books: 4/6 (Reign of the Fallen)

Good evening, squiders. My major stressors are essentially taken care of, but I’m still having a lot of anxiety as this is an era of change. (I’m switching jobs, and I have now taken care of telling my old job and finalizing the details on the new job.) I’m sure everything will be fine once I have settled into my new role but for now everything is a bit…weird.

This is really the first time I’ve turned in notice at a job with the full two weeks and all that. I’ve done intra-company transfers, and I’ve straight out quit. And I do like my current job, and my coworkers, so there is a lingering sadness to the whole thing.

Creating through upheaval is doable, but you’ve got to make changes in your expectations. In 2020, when my spouse was going through cancer treatments (and lockdown and all that jazz), writing fiction just was not working. So I worked on nonfiction (and created the Writers’ Motivation Series) until I was ready to move back to fiction, and even then, I wrote a lot of horror for the next two years, which I fully believe was a trauma response.

So, yeah, everything is a little uncertain right now. Things are weird. My current coworkers and I have had a couple of awkward conversations. I don’t know how long it will take me to settle into my new job, so there’s some anxiety about that.

So, while I am not doing anything especially taxing right now anyway (as it turns out the critique marathon is the 12-week one, not the 8-week one), I need to remember to give myself grace for the next few weeks. Let myself focus on lower energy things. More joy, less stress.

I’ve still got to do my critiques for the marathon, but it’s not as intensive as it has been in the past as there are fewer people participating this time.

But other than that, I think we shall read, or game (House Flipper WAS saved in the cloud, all is fine), or draw and paint, and slowly work through my story ideas in the hopes of organizing ideas into stories, and continue on my morning pages.

And if all that really happens is reading and movies, well, that will be okay, too.

What are your go-to activities when life is uncertain, squiders?

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Books by Kit Campbell