The Things That Once Were

Editing is a good thing, undoubtedly. But there is nothing like the feeling of actually creating something without worrying too much about what one is creating. To be in the flow without the critical side of you constantly seeking to slow things down is akin to skiing down a mountain for the first time. And so with that thought in mind, I am giving you a blog post I have written completely free of any kind of censure. Take it for what it is:

I spent the day cleaning my basement as a way of avoiding writing. I haven’t written a thing all month, nor have I made a sale. It’s not that I’m despairing of writing, it’s just that I lack aim. Desire roils within me but every direction I take soon seems to be the wrong one. So I dig through the pieces of my past in order to find the man I am supposed to be.

I have gone through my books; so many of them have accumulated through the years. The 18 years since I graduated seem to me to have been one big long push. I’ve bought books intending to read them when time permits but it never has. I realize now that no matter what I do in life I will have only scratched the surface of what there is to know, to discover.

There is a bookmark on page 74 of The Blood of Abraham, by Jimmy Carter, a book dealing with the Middle East. I bought and began to read it when I was 20 in 1986, and that’s as far as I ever got. I also began Dostoyevski’s The Idiot about that time, but somehow managed to finish that one. I’ve found my highlighted copy of Erich Fromm’s Sane Society which I feared I had lent out and would never see again. I bought another copy, but there’s something priceless about a book you’ve taken the time to highlight the truly essential parts.

And there’s something special about the actual copy of a special book you’ve read when you were younger. I still keep the Lord Of The Rings boxed set I got for a Christmas present from my brother Rick when I was around the age of 10. The books, especially The Fellowship of the Ring, are no longer in one piece. But there is a picture on the top of the box of the fellowship as they walk away towards their great adventure. It is defining in my memory. You can only see the backs of the nine, but the memories the picture conjures up are still vivid. And so I hang on to that set even though I have another brand new one awaiting the time when I shall once again explore Middle Earth.

I also have 2 sets of The Foundation trilogy. Again, I cannot bear to get rid of the ones in which I first discovered the Trantorian universe. But I managed to pick up a set with the cover art done by Darrell K. Sweet. Perhaps it is wrong to judge a book by its cover, but the cover should try to live up to what lies inside.

Darrell K. Sweet’s work is what originally interested me in Stephen R. Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I was too young to afford the books when I first saw them, but I eagerly pounced on each as they would arrive at the local bookstore I’d frequent to by a comic book, something which at 25 cents a pop, was well in my price range. A while later, while helping my brother Bob move, I couldn’t help notice the three box set of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant in one of his drawers, still in shrinkwrap. They ended up being my Christmas present that year. To this day, I have no idea if they had been intended as a gift or if I made such a fuss over them that he felt compelled to give them to me.

It seems that 15 years in my basement has put some age on these dear friends of mine. There is a certain mustiness to them, a degree of dust that has accumulated, and some mold that I cannot dust off the tops. The dust cover of Jean Dutourd’s Pluche is barely hanging on, yet I cannot bare to part with it.

I cannot believe I have allowed the things I have held so dear to endure the ravages of time and neglect in this way. For all my good intentions, life somehow managed to separate me from them. But I have lived long enough now to realize that it is the way of all things. Things get pushed to the side, forgotten about, and sometimes replaced. We can only carry those we love so far before we are exhausted by the burden. I seemed to have been born with a sense of nostalgia, always desiring to preserve what came before me. But I am beginning to feel that I too am but part of the great caravan marching towards dust and nothingness.

It may sound as if I am despairing, but I’m not. I’m merely trying to make sense of it all. I’m simply trying to understand what it is I was put here for and what I can do with the time allotted me. I realize that in order to hold on to what you have you have to let go of what you once had. I do not wish to let go of my past. I’ve always felt that my principle aim in life was to remain true to the child I once was and the ideals he held deal. But I realize that life moves on, that sometimes what you are holding on to is merely a shell of what it once was. And so I search amongst the things of my past, hoping to grasp the essence of what once was so important to me.

Stories Light And Dark

I've just released a collection of 10 short stories entitled Stories Light And Dark. We're talking less than 22,000 words, so some of the stories are quite short. They are a collection of dark-themed stories mixed with stories that reach towards the light. My original intent was to separate them into two separate books, but the truth is nobody much cares for the more spiritual ones :) Not only that, I love to mix them all together in order to leave the reader guessing a little bit as to which way the story will turn. Give it a look. For the moment, it's only available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Light-Dark-Ten-Short-ebook/dp/B00P5U55GY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414988150&sr=8-1&keywords=stories+light+and+dark+james+rozoff

The big "1" on the cover indicates that this is the first in a series of short story compilations I have in mind.

Enjoy A Free Book, Help A Guy With Cancer

So I have this writer friend named Brandon Hale. That’s not unusual, a lot of people in the writing community call Brandon a friend. He’s that kind of person, the kind that you like immediately and never have any reason to stop liking him.

Sure, it’s easy to say someone is well liked, but a bunch of his friends are putting their money and time where their words are. You see, Brandon Hale has cancer in the intestines, and his entire attentions for the past six months have been on fighting for his life. That means he hasn’t been able to write, or edit, or promote, or do any of the things a writer has to do to put bread on the table. And that is where the independent writing community is stepping in to help a friend.

Some incredibly selfless people have donated money to promote the first book in Brandon’s primary book series, Day Soldiers. It deals with a dystopian future where vampires and werewolves have declared war on humanity. While intelligently written, it is still good reading for the younger set.

The goal is to get this book to #1 on the free list on Amazon. We’re up to #21 as I write this, so we’re getting close. This would not only be a symbolic victory, it would get Brandon the attention that all of us involved believe he deserves.

All that I ask of you is to pick yourself up a free digital copy and maybe give it a look. You might even want to pick up the next book in the series, no pressure. And if you want to share the information with others, that would be great too.

Day Soldiers on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Day-Soldiers-Brandon-Hale-ebook/dp/B007QJBBE2/ref=sr_1_5_twi_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414713107&sr=8-5&keywords=brandon+hale

Day Soldiers on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/day-soldiers/id521459045?mt=11

Day Soldiers on Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/day-soldiers-brandon-hale/1110016388?ean=2940033139743&itm=1&usri=day+soldiers

The Road To The Association Cover

The Cover For The Association

So another book has been released and another cover done. They say you should never judge a book by its cover but they also say not to have more than two drinks in an evening: in other words, people do it so you better accept it. With that being said, I thought my choice for a cover for my third book in The Amazing Morse series would be easy. Early on I used the term “sleep of reason” in my book, and it seemed a natural title for it. I discuss the breakdown of the current cultural paradigms and the chaos that could ensue from that. The term “sleep of reason” of course comes from the etching by the Spanish painter Fransisco Goya, so it seemed a given that the cover should be some kind of reproduction of the famous painting. 

The full title of the etching, by the way, is “The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters.” I think that very well summed up a major element in my series, that demons and ghosts are creations of warped human life/energy/chi or what have you. Plus, the sleep element is also stressed in the title. My main character has the ability to see things in his dreams that come to light in real life. So all I had to do was get the artist I had for the first two books to redo the original.

Except that the more I wrote the more I started to think that maybe it wasn’t such a good cover for the book I was writing. While it fit in well with the overall series, there was nothing that tied it to this particular book. And I was already looking further down the road to the end of this series. There will be some climactic moment, some final book that draws to a conclusion themes and ideas that have been working their way through this group of books. I wanted to have that title and that cover in my hip pocket, to be used later at the correct moment.

It’s nothing new for me. Perchance to Dream was supposed to be the name for my first book (lifted from Hamlet, of course). The original idea for the cover of that book was this:

If you think about it, there are references here to Hamlet, a man staring at a skull contemplating death. But somehow the idea of The Amazing Morse got a hold of me. I liked the juxtaposition of  Amazing and Morse, a rather common name. I wanted to show the distance between Dave Morse’s aspirations and necessary showmanship from the reality of his life. It was meant to be somewhat ironic. Plus it kind of rolls of the tongue, what with the alliteration. And so I saved Perchance To Dream for the title of book number two, which ended up ruminating on death a lot anyway and included a Hamlet quote or two.

And so I now had to come up with a new name for my current book, just as for the first. I considered The Nineteen Cuts, and may have also briefly considered a few other names. Then I thought of The Association, named after the group that had fallen into evil and had ended up being the antagonists of the novel.

I liked putting the title of the book on a tombstone. The Association had died a century and a half ago, although their ghosts remained. The original picture that we used for the tombstone came from The JFK Prep, the history of which was a major source of inspiration for the book

.

Here’s my original mock up for the cover:

It was at that point that Suzie O’Connell became involved. She had done the non-painting portions of my first two covers. She has been doing so well with her writing that I didn’t think she’d want to be bothered doing my cover, but she was kind enough to not only do it but also put up with my constant input and requests for changes. Here’s a big shout out to you, Suzie. Thanks for all the help and the infinite patience. You can find more of Suzie's covers as well as her writing on her website: http://suzieoconnell.com/# 

Oh, and remember what I said about the Sleep Of Reason for a future cover, Suzie J 

And here’s the finished product:

P.S. It’s not something anyone would notice, but I nevertheless made Suzie replace a cross on the tombstone with a dagger. We authors are a demanding lot, you know.

Campfire Story

As a writing exercise, I was asked to write a story to be told around a campfire. This is the result. It can stand a rewrite, but campfire stories don't have that luxury, so I present it to you as it is in a single telling:

Campfires are usually good for two different kinds of stories. The first kind are those thought up by adults in order to scare children. They are usually encouraged by children who bait their elders by insisting the story is not scary even as their eyes slowly widen.

The second kind is told after all of the imagined stories have been exhausted and the children put to bed. These are the stories the teller is hoping will have some kind of reasonable explanation that they themselves have yet to find. They are the stories of unusual experiences that cannot be real yet cannot be denied. They are told in the hopes that some explanation given by someone who has heard it might be plausible enough to drive out the explanation the teller knows in his heart is true.

I will leave it to the reader to decide which type of story it is that I’m about to relate. Perhaps it is some mixture of both. Perhaps I blend the imagined with the truth in order to convince myself that what I experienced was nothing more than a story to be told to children seeking a good scare.

I met my wife, Amanda, in Chicago but she was a small town girl at heart. After we were married, she wanted to move back to her hometown to raise a family. And so it was that a city boy such as me ended up living in the heart of Packerland, Wisconsin.

The first summer had been nice, but it was reaching the cold half of Autumn, now, and our small town didn’t seem to do enough to keep out the dark emptiness of the approaching winter.

We had been invited to a gathering at her friend’s boyfriend’s house, to sit around a fire and have a few drinks. By the time I got home from work and we were on our way, it was already getting dark. I didn’t realize it would be that far out of town, and we ended up taking roads I was unfamiliar with through an endless succession of farm land. Pickup trucks passed me on narrow roads that I drove on cautiously. I was a fish out of water here, in a place where the rules were unfamiliar. Once you leave the town, the rules of the road become a little less enforced. It’s a combination of locals travelling quickly over familiar territory mixed with the occasional farm vehicle that can’t make it over twenty miles per hour.

I was stuck behind such a vehicle now, a large truck with a tarp over its trailer that did little to stop the silage from spilling out behind it. A pickup was behind me, anxiously waiting to get past the both of us. I tried to wave the pickup around, but he seemed to be waiting for me. Nervously, I pulled into the oncoming lane and gunned the engine. There were no cars coming from the other direction, so I just put my foot to the floor in order to get out from behind the truck that was leaking corn stalks all over my windshield.

Like I said, I didn’t see any carlights approaching, so I felt safe. So when my wife screamed, it scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know what to do until I saw the truck in front of me slow quickly, then saw the form of a deer nearly directly in front of me. I slammed on the brakes, tried to keep my car from hitting either the deer or the farm truck. It’s like the damn deer was looking to get hit, because it jumped right in my path. My foot was stuck so hard to the brake that it was like I was trying to will the car to stop. I heard the thud as the deer hit the right side of my car. It hit the ground, dragged itself up, and sprung off into the wooded area on the other side of the road.

“Thank God it’s all right,” I said.

“It’ll probably die,” said my wife, almost accusingly.

“I didn’t mean to hit it!” I felt bad enough, I didn’t need her making me feel worse.

“You didn’t have to pass that truck. You could have just let the other truck pass us both.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not used to being out here.”

“Well just be careful from now on,” she said. “It’s rutting season and deer are a lot more active, especially around twilight.”

My wife came from a family that hunted, hell, she had killed a few deer in her time. I couldn’t understand how someone who hunted deer could be so concerned for them. I drove slowly now, not caring what other drivers might think. From time to time my wife would point to a gully or into the woods and I would see small points of golden light, the reflection of my headlights in the eyes of deer. Sometimes it was a single pair of eyes, other times it was several in a group. The fear of another collision made me yearn to reach our destination.

It was just about dark by the time we arrived at Brian’s house, a place that was alone on the landscape save for a barn and an oversized workshop/garage. Near the driveway was adeer carcass, another victim of traffic. But this one was far more damaged than the one I had hit.

“What happened to that?” I asked my wife. It looked like half its body had been skinned.

“I don’t know. A semi, maybe. Maybe it got run over by a Tiller,” she said, as she stared at the thing. The darkness seemed to blunt the disgust at the sight.

There were several vehicles—all but one were pickups—in the gravel driveway. As much as I was happy to have arrived, I did not want to leave the fully warmed car to step into the cold night. To be honest, I was just going for her sake. I was trying my best to fit in to my new environment.

We approached two men who were busy building an impressive pile of wood. Old lawn chairs surrounded the place where the fire would be.

“Hi, Brian,” said my wife, recognizing her friends beau.

“Hi,” said Brian, a cigarette in his mouth and a can of beer in one hand, a load of twigs in the other.

“Where’s Laurie?”

“She’s inside the house with Adam.”

“Oh,” Amanda said. “I’ll go say hi. Turning to me, she said, “You want to help them?”

“Let me go say to Adam,” I said. I really didn’t feel comfortable with a bunch of strangers. Besides, I really liked Adam, who seemed born to sports. We’d been to a picnic with Laurie and Adam in the summer and he did nothing but play baseball the whole time, a real natural.

We entered the house—a bachelor farmer’s house with minimal furniture and décor—to the noise of crying. Adam was only six, but he was all boy, so it took me a little off guard seeing him like this. Laurie was busy trying to sooth him but he was in a panic.

“What’s the matter?” asked Laurie, in a gentle cooing voice. But Adam was so worked up he could not articulate what was bothering him.

“What’s up, buddy?” I asked, hoping I could distract him from his worry. But he had no time for me, seemed to have trouble grabbing breath.

“It’s okay,” Laurie said, bouncing him in her arms as she would a much younger child.

“It’s…it’s out there,” he said between sobs.

“It’s all right,” she said. “It can’t hurt you.”

“What is it?” asked Amanda softly to Laurie.

“Oh, there’s an old burning barrel out back. Brian found a dead raccoon the other day and put it in there. I didn’t even think Adam could look over the rim, but he must have seen the thing. It was all burnt up, must have looked nasty.”

Amanda and I sat there looking rather awkward for a minute, when Laurie said, “You two get yourself a drink and go sit outside. I’ll be out as soon as he settles down.”

Amanda poured herself a wine and grabbed me a can of beer from the fridge and we went out to join the others around the fire.

People around these parts tend to be rather cliquey and not very well mannered. We found ourselves sitting by ourselves, nursing our drinks and listening to Brian’s two friends talking amongst themselves.

“Boiled up some sheep hearts,” one of them said. “I had the old lady try ‘em but she won’t eat ‘em. Better than goin’ ta waste, the way meat prices are nowadays.”

“Awful tough,” said another voice. The figures were mere shadows against a rapidly growing fire.

“Not if you boil ‘em,” said the first.

I cast a glance at my wife to see if this kind of talk was normal where she was from. She looked at me and with a glance let me know that it made her sick to her stomach as well.

Looking down, I noticed a small cat near my leg, acting as if it wanted my attention. I’ve always been an animal lover—which is why the comments about sheep hearts made me nearly ill—so I reached down and stroked the little guy, much to his approval. Barn cat, I thought. Cats like this one have to work for their living, eat whatever mice they find.

I stopped petting him but he nuzzled up against my leg. I reached down to pet him again, and in the light of the fire I noticed the pustule that was where his right eye should have been. I pulled my hand away in surprise and disgust.

“What’s wrong?” asked my wife.

“That cat. It’s disgusting.”

Amanda looked at the thing, still wanting to be friends with me, still trying to snuggle up against my leg.

“It’s a barn cat, James. Who knows what kind of things they get into.”

It continued its attempts to be friendly, but I just wanted it away from me. I nudged it gently with my foot, but it would not take a subtle hint. I shoved it harder but still it did not seem to understand I wanted it to go away. I’m not one to be rough with animals, but I really wanted it to just go away. I squelched my normal instinct towards kindness and gave it a rather firm kick.

“YEEOOOWWW!” it screamed loudly. The others around the fire stopped their conversation to look in my direction.

“I didn’t know it was there,” I lied.

“They been actin’ funny, lately,” said Brian, a beer still in his hand. I could tell by his voice he must have been drinking for a while now.

“How many do you have?” I asked, trying to be conversational, trying to make everyone forget I’d just made his cat scream.

“I don’t know. One of ‘em had kittens a couple weeks ago, but only a couple of ‘em made it. And others, they seem to come and go.”

I looked out at the field that was between us and the barn and noticed several sets of eyes reflecting the fire in the darkness, the flames moving in their stare.

Before long, Laurie came out of the house, a glass that tinkled with ice in her hand.

“Your sister said she’d stay with Adam for a while,” she said to Brian.

“He’s not normally like this,” she said to my wife, sitting down in the chair next to her. In a moment they were lost in conversation and I was left by myself to stare at the fire and eavesdrop on the conversations of others. Perhaps I would have pushed myself to be more sociable with a couple more drinks but it had been decided that I was driving that night.

The fire warped both the looks and sounds from the people who sat opposite of it, so that I began to feel as if I had drunk more than I had. I turned my glance away from the fire, looked to the porch of the house and noticed a little figure in the porchlight. It walked down the stairs and towards the fire, a woman walking behind him. It was Adam, and he walked his way calmly towards his mom, who let him up on her lap.

“You feeling better now?”

“Yeah,” he said, a little sleepily.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” she said, stroking his blond hair.

“I know. It’s okay. He’s not dead.”

“What?” said his mom, surprised by the boy’s response.

“He’s not dead, mommy. I thought he was dead, but he’s not.”

“Of course he’s dead,” Laurie’s voice betrayed the shock and concern she felt. “But don’t worry, he won’t hurt you.”

“No. He’s not dead. He talked to me. He told me he was okay.”

The concerned look Laurie had on her face earlier when Adam was crying was nothing compared to how she appeared now. There are things children say for no explainable reason, but this went beyond anything she’d experienced.

“Stop it!” she said, her anger covering her fear. “It’s dead. Isn’t it, Brian? Brian put it in that barrel himself. It was dead then and then he burned it. So stop that crazy talk, Adam.”

But Adam spoke with all the authority a six year old could summon. “It’s not dead, mommy. I told you it’s not dead.”

“Nonsense,” she said, standing up while still holding him. “I’ll show you he’s dead.

I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t really know Laurie or the others that well. But this was not ordinary behavior for anyone. I looked at my wife and could see the same concern on her face.

Meanwhile, Laurie walked towards the fence where there were several barrels. By this time, every one of us was involved in wanting a resolution to what was playing out before us.

She looked into each barrel, intent on showing her son the very thing that only short moments ago had driven him to hysterics.

“Brian, it’s too damn dark to see anything. Bring me a flashlight.”

“It’s in there,” he said, the thickness of his speech abating somewhat because of the need to deal with the situation. “No sense in setting him off again. It’s in there. I put it in myself.”

“Just bring me a damn flashlight!” Her level of excitement seemed to nearly match that of her son’s earlier.

Brian walked into the house quickly. The other two men that were with him wandered over towards where Laurie and Adam were standing. When I saw my wife rise to head that way, I followed.

“He’s okay, mommy,” said Adam.

“Shut up! Just shut up.” Laurie was clearly upset and I can’t say I blamed her. There was no accounting for the way Adam was behaving. Children don’t behave that way. He was calm, now, but there was no explanation for why he would be saying what he was saying. No logical explanation. I felt a chill run up my back, one I believed I felt with everyone else who was standing there.

The screen door to the house slammed noisily, Brian’s work boots sounding on the cold-hardened ground, the beam of a flashlight bobbing along the ground.

“Here’s your flashlight, Laurie.” There was noticeable anger in Brian’s voice “You’re just going to scare him again.”

“Just give me the flashlight.” When he arrived she grabbed it angrily from his hand.

She flashed it in the one to the right. I couldn’t see what was in it, but it was nothing that interested Laurie. She tried the one in the middle, then the left. I could see inside the one in the left. There were unburned pieces of scrap lumber in there, no ash that I could see.

“Which one was it?” asked Laurie, her voice twisting still higher in pitch.

“The middle one,” said Brian.

She pointed to the middle one with the beam of the light, all of us straining to see inside of it. Her hand was shaking now, so that the shadows moved about the inside of the barrel. The moving light made it difficult to be sure what we saw.

Brian grabbed the flashlight from her. She released it, feeling the need to grasp her son with both hands. She was a primitive mother now, protecting her child from the unknown dangers of the darkness.

“It was in this one. I’m sure it was,” said Brian, too convinced that he was right to permit fear to enter his thoughts. “I know it was,” he said, a little less certain.

It was still more of a riddle for him than a reason for fear when he dropped the hand that held the flashlight. That’s when I saw a dark line on the ground, extending from the middle barrel towards the fire where we had been a moment ago. A trail of black ash marked the bare earth below us.

“See, mommy,” said Adam, sounding like any normal pleased child. “It’s alive. I told you it was alive.”

I looked at Adam and there was a contented smile on his face, like a child discovering a lightning bug or butterfly. But the look upon his mother’s face is one I’ll never forget. She appeared as one intent on clinging to an idea that did not agree with her direct experience. Whatever was happening, her mind was going to stay with an explanation that she could live with. She stared at the line of ash as though it were a fuse which her gaze could light and burn to nothingness.

I’ve always been a person who’s overly concerned with manners, of making proper greetings and farewells. But at the moment I simply could no longer stay in this place for another moment. Everyone else stood still, glancing at the line, wondering what would be at the other end. But I grabbed at my wife’s arm. It was hard to break the inertia that held her to her spot, but I pulled her towards the car and she followed as one without will of her own. The eyes from the field still echoed the flames of the fire as we walked past, not all of them in pairs. I opened the door for my wife, who got in without speaking. I got in the driver’s side and started the car. I backed up as quickly as caution permitted, as slowly as fear would allow. It did not occur to me until we were safely down the road a few hundred yards that I had not seen the deer carcass where it had been when we arrived.

Laurie seemed to distance herself from my wife after that night, as though she didn’t want any reminder of what had happened. Perhaps it was her way of protecting her son. She broke up with Brian, too. I’ve seen him a couple of times at local stores, and we talk, but nothing about that night. It’s there, we both know it, but there’s really no way to broach such a subject. Not in the daylight. Not in the middle of our ordinary busy routines. It’s only around a fire, late at night, away from the ordinary world, that one can really discuss such matters.

I'm Not Like Everybody Else Pt. 2

I earlier wrote a blog stating that I not only would not but could not write my books in order to appeal to readers of a certain genre. I don't think that's a bad thing, but I am, at least initially, prone to being misunderstood. I'm hoping that given time, people will come to know me and accept what it is I write. I fondly remember a dear friend of mine introducing me to someone else in this manner: "This is James, he grows on you." I like that, I like the idea that what you see is not necessarily what you get. Sometimes people put on a front. Me, I like to be a little more reserved, holding back what's best until we've earned each other's trust.

At any rate, my reviews so far have born out my guess that I don't fit readily in any convenient classification. Here are some quotes from readers on my various writings:

"This book is not your typical 'Horror Story'."  From Amazon review of The Amazing Morse

"This is a somewhat different novel of psychological terror and horror." Another Amazon review of The Amazing Morse

 "Odd and Compelling" "I guess the genre for this book is semi-paranormal, but for me, it was an essay on reality and simulacra disguised as a novel." Amazon review of Perchance to Dream

"Different."  Barnes and Noble Review of Ashes on the Water

"Refreshingly original too, a different kind of horror." Smashwords review of The Amputation

"original" Smashwords review of The Amputation

"Chilling and unpredictable." Smashwords review of Brandon Kratz

So there you have it. If you're interested in something that isn't easily classified, something that is more than a carbon copy of something that has already been done, I invite you to check out some of my writing, which can be found by typing my name into a search engine. Or you can just click on one of my book covers located on the right side of the page.

And since I took the name of this post from the title of a Kinks song, I find it fitting to end it with a quote from another Kinks song (Working At The Factory):

Never wanted to be like everybody else
But now there are so many like me sitting on the shelf
They sold us a dream but in reality
It was just another factory

The Association (The Amazing Morse #3)

I have just hit the publish button for Amazon Kindle and am awaiting it to be made available for sale. This is the third book I've published and for some reason I have even more butterflies in my stomach than with the other two. Perhaps it is that the more I publish the more real the idea of pursuing this as a career seems to be. The first novel was a dream come true, and while I had some wild flights of fancy about what I could achieve with it, I really didn't know what to expect. The second book, it's hard for me to remember that far back. It's only been a year, but what a year it's been. Looking back, the fact that I've managed to write a book this year has been quite an achievement. I know people who've written 8 books in a year, so it doesn't seem like my one book is such a big thing, but for me it is. It's been a struggle and a major commitment, but it has also been a bit of an anchor for me, a refuge from the demands of the outside world. It has taken a lot from me, but it has also given back. Writing is a process of discovery. One has to look into the deep recesses of the mind, heart and soul in order to put something you're proud of on the page. I hope that's what I've done; at the moment I'm a little too fried-out to tell. I'll post a link here when it becomes available. In the meantime, here is the cover:

The Association is now available on Kindle. You can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Association-Amazing-Morse-Book-ebook/dp/B00OL54DRQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413511033&sr=8-1&keywords=james+rozoff+the+association