If you were subscribed to my blog, you’re already subscribed to my Substack as well. I’ve moved all those emails over already. If you’re not subscribed, then you will need to subscribe to my Substack manually.

Here’s the link to the Substack.

I’ll still probably do stuff on my blog. This is, after all, where I started. But most of my work is going to be published through Substack, and that’s where I’ll be posting regularly.

This was just a quick update. I wanted to make sure you guys all knew what was going on.

Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day.

The post I’ve moved appeared first on Elliot Kessler.

My new science fiction novel is available on Kindle now!

Thank you to everyone who supported me and helped me through this one. It was a lot of fun to write, and I can’t wait to see what you guys think of it.

This one asks an important moral question. Do the ends ever justify the means? The characters of the story each have their own answer to this question, and they act accordingly, which creates a lot of tension within the Esslar star system. The tension builds and builds until it needs to release. But will the tension gradually deflate? Or will the star system pop?

I love the plot of this novel. It took a lot of turns that I even didn’t expect. The characters were fun to write. I had intentions for them in the beginning, but the more I wrote, the more they took on lives of their own.

With this novel, I learned how to write without an outline. It was really fun to dive into a project without much planning. I had a blast writing without limiting myself to a pre-established plot. I made sure to follow some kind of structure, but it was still very freeing.

Then came the editing, which was harder than it was with Liar’s Legacy. I had to rearrange some scenes, take out others, and add new ones. There were many inconsistencies, including a dead character showing up at the end because I had forgotten I killed him off.

But everything was fixed in the edits. All-in-all, the editing process was much easier than it could have been. I could have gone completely off course and derailed the entire plot at any point. But the story remained mostly consistent throughout the drafting phase, so it wasn’t a total wreck of a first draft.

I learned a lot while writing this book that I hope to share with all of you. I learned about improvising a story, I learned how to write faster, and I learned how to create meaningful plot-twists.

This novel was a ton of fun to write, and I hope you have fun reading it! The Kindle edition is available here, and the paperback edition will be available later this month.

This book is the beginning of a new series, but it can be enjoyed on its own as well. Many of the plot threads are tied off nicely at the end, but the story doesn’t end here.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy Fossil. Have a fantastic day!

The post Fossil Is Available Now! appeared first on Elliot Kessler.

With Lewis Mining Corporation encroaching on their territory and the Phoenix Fleet pirate crew causing chaos, Greyson Thane struggles to keep his corporation afloat. Mila Fernandes, Greyson Thane’s top admiral, works hard to haul in as many asteroids as possible. But it still isn’t enough. It won’t be long before they’re out of business and out of jobs.

 But when Mila and her crew uncover a priceless humanoid fossil inside of an asteroid, the Esslar star system falls into turmoil as everyone races to get their hands on the prize. Whoever gets the asteroid wins the star system.

This is the premise of the first book in the Fossil Saga, a new action-packed science fiction series filled with fun characters, fierce battles, and more plot-twists than you could imagine!

The first novel releases in ebook format this Thursday on February 29th. That’s only three days away! The paperback will release in March.

I’m so excited to share this story with you all. I’ve been working on it for a while, and it’s been a blast. I love these characters, I love this story, and it involves some of my best action scenes so far, and this series is only getting started!

I don’t have cover art to share with you yet, but it is coming. I’ll make another post when I receive that.

I hope you’re as excited about this book’s launch as I am. It’s going to be a blast. I will see you all on the 29th!

Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day.

The post Fossil | A New Science Fiction Novel appeared first on Elliot Kessler.

I’m hard at work on Fossil, and I hope to get it out by this month. It’s nearly complete. I only have a couple more editing passes to do, then it should be good to go.

This is going to be the first novel of a larger series that I am very excited to present to you guys. I think the direction of the series is very interesting, and I can’t wait to write it. There’s going to be a lot of fun stuff and a lot of tense action, and I hope you guys are excited for it.

I also have some other things I’m working on. Last year, I wrote a story called The Metal Gunslinger. I enjoyed writing the character so much that I decided to give him his own series of novels. He’s going to be a series character like John Carter or Flash Gordon. Each novel is going to be a new adventure, but they’re all going to be in the same, interconnected universe. That means some characters from previous books will appear in future installments, and some story elements will crossover into other novels. Some stories might even have direct sequels. Who knows where the series will lead?

I’m hard at work on the first draft of the first Metal Gunslinger novel, and I am loving the direction it’s taking. I’m having a blast with the characters. The story is small, but tense. The stakes are high, and the characters must find a way to work together and survive before it’s too late.

One thing I enjoyed about writing the original short story is the style. I wanted to make it seem like a report that H4-NK was giving to his superiors, and I brought that over into this first novel. I’m looking forward to finishing it, and I think you guys are really going to enjoy it.

I’m also working on some other stories, like the second Eorum Chronicles novella and another fantasy novel, but I’m still planning those out and haven’t begun drafting yet. I’m planning on writing Eorum Chronicles after Metal Gunslinger, so it is coming very soon.

Other news

Aside from the books I’m working on, I wanted to tell you about another project I’ve been undertaking the last couple of weeks. I’m working on starting a YouTube channel. This is going to be a place where I talk about books, movies, shows, and highlight the storytelling techniques they use. I’ll give some writing lessons as well, teaching you guys what I’ve learning in my journey as an author.

I’ve finished a few scripts and even recorded a few of them. I want to have a voice over with an animated avatar on screen rather than filming the videos. I’m doing this because I also love animating, but it’s hard to find the time since I’m busy writing as well. This will help give myself a balance between writing and animating, because they’ll both be supporting one another. It’ll be a lot of hard work, but I think it’ll be worth it in the end.

Right now, I’m struggling with audio quality. I have a new microphone, but I’m having a hard time finding a place to record where I don’t pick up other, unwanted noises. I’m sure I’ll figure something out, but that’s been a struggle right now.

I’m also very self-conscious about my voice. I understand that everyone hates how they sound in recordings, but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier. I feel embarrassed listening to myself after recording a script. I’m still going to try to be brave and upload my recordings anyway. I’ll just have to push through listening to my own voice over and over while animating my avatar.

That’s the plan for the channel right now. I might end up switching to filming the videos anyway, but I think it’s more likely that I will animate them.

Anyway, that’s all the news for right now.

Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day.

The post Fossil, Future Projects, and New Stuff appeared first on Elliot Kessler.

Anyway, Patterson.

His books are… okay.

In all fairness, I’ve only read two. I’ve read The Shadow and Private Gold. The Shadow is a science fiction/fantasy thriller based on the old comic book character from about a hundred years ago, and Private Gold is a novella (sorry, BookShot), about some conspiracy in Johannesburg.

I don’t remember the plot of Private Gold very well. The only thing I remember from that book is learning about Patterson’s BookShot series, which is described as books that are up to 150 pages, cut all the fat out of their plots, and are only five dollars.

Congratulations, James Patterson. You invented the novella.

Some of you guys might not know who James Patterson is. He’s a thriller author, and he’s one of if not the bestselling author of all time. He’s sold a lot of books. You’ve likely seen his novels in airports and stuff. He seems to be very popular.

I don’t get the hype. Again, I’ve barely read any of his work. But the little bit I read was less than satisfying. His characters are bland, his plots are basic, and he ruined the Shadow.

The original character of Lamont Cranston (A.K.A. the Shadow) is a masked vigilante armed with two pistols and supernatural abilities who strikes fear into low-level criminals to fulfill his vow and rid the world of evil.

Remove the pistols and the powers, and you have a very familiar description…

That’s right! The Shadow was the inspiration for Batman. Millionaire with a secret, crime-fighting identity and a posh butler. Bruce Wayne who? Lamont did it first!

The Shadow has had several reboot comics. I haven’t read any of the originals, but I have read some of the newer ones. I like them. They’re fun, action-packed, and exciting. They aren’t exactly beautiful, thought-provoking, tear-jerking works of art, but they’re not trying to be. They know the readers are only there for the action, and they go all in. I appreciate that.

But then there’s James Patterson’s book, where he got everything, and I mean everything, wrong. But that’s not even the worst part! The worst part is that he knows he got everything wrong, and he acknowledges that in the book. It’s part of the story!

The book is about a man named Lamont Cranston who gets poisoned by his arch-enemy, Kahn (not the cool one from Star Trek 2), while on a date with his girlfriend, Margo Lane, who also gets poisoned. Lamont quickly drives Margo to some warehouse where he has a secret life-preserving thing. He tells his butler to put himself and Margo in the machine.

Decades later, Lamont is awoken by a young girl in a dystopian future, where Kahn is in power and rules everyone. The young girl who wakes him up is a huge fan of this character called the Shadow, and she has all the comics and all the movies in her room. When she finds out Lamont is the Shadow, she takes him back to her house and shows off her collection of memorabilia.

This is the worst part of the book. Are you ready?

When Lamont looks at all the comics and stuff, he says something like, “Yeah, they always got me all wrong in those depictions. I wasn’t anything like that. I never used two pistols. It’s ridiculous!”

So, the Shadow in this book isn’t the Shadow? Great. Wonderful. Way to please your audience, James! I was looking forward to the Shadow going to the bad guy base and hiding in the dark while all the goons tremble, pointing their machine guns at all the corners where Lamont could be hiding. They’d hear a cackle echo throughout the room, sounding like it was coming from everywhere at once. Then a deep voice like a demon would growl, “Who knows what evil lies in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.”

Then the Shadow would drop from the ceiling with his two pistols and take out all the goons single-handed.

That’s what I wanted! That’s what I was looking forward to!

Is that what we got? Nope! We got some dude who could turn invisible on command occasionally and never once held two pistols. He wasn’t scary. He wasn’t cool. He wasn’t interesting. Just a dude that was like, “Oh, yeah. That guy is bad. Let’s go stop him.”

The final fight of the book ends with some kind of magic battle or something that should have been in Harry Potter, not The Shadow. Stories with the Shadow are supposed to be about a man fighting crime, not shooting fireballs at Big Brother from 1984. What was this book trying to be?

Also, spoiler alert for this last section, but it turns out that the girl who found Lamont was also his daughter, which I figured out before I reached halfway through the book. She could turn invisible, she had a strange connection with Margo, and I easily put two and two together.

It wasn’t a twist, Patterson. If you’re going to put clues in a book, make it less obvious. I would think you would know that because you write detective novels!

There’s also a scene right before the final fight where the main characters are on their way to find Kahn, but they find this lady giving birth in an abandoned building, and some other people are there to help her. The characters stop and help the lady give birth, then they leave and keep running down the street to fight Kahn.

What was this scene? It didn’t add anything to the plot or the characters! I think it was supposed to foreshadow that the girl was Lamont and Margo’s kid, but I already knew that because I’m not dumb. I used a little bit of thinking power to reach that conclusion. Who do you think I am, James?

Basically, I didn’t like this book. It was dumb, and it assumed the audience was dumb, too.

“Maybe this is a fluke,” I thought. “Surely someone as famous and bestselling as James Patterson is a good author. Maybe I only read one of his bad works. Not every story can be a winner.”

So, with this in mind, I picked up a novella from the library called Private Gold. It still stunk.

But it wasn’t bad the same way The Shadow was bad. There was no previously established character to ruin. There was no legacy to tarnish. It was just a boring, basic, stereotypical thriller story. No interesting characters, no new angles, and no fresh ideas. It was the same tired tropes of detective thrillers that I’ve seen millions of timesacross the board.

You know those movies that characters watch within other shows that are the most generic things ever? Like in a sitcom when a family gets together to watch a movie and the movie is hilariously bad. You know what I’m talking about?

That’s what Private Gold felt like. There was no attempt to try anything new. It was like Patterson had a checklist and ticked off all the marks as he was writing instead of trying to create a fresh and interesting story. It was dumb, and I hated it.

Now, with all that out of the way, there is something to be said about James Patterson’s writing style. His stories and characters might be bland, lifeless, and unoriginal. But the prose he uses sets the reader’s imagination on fire.

When I read a Patterson story, I can see what he sees. The scenes play out in my head like a movie. I became immersed in the world of the story. I slip into the pages of the book and I stand right alongside rip-off Lamont Cranston and his idiot daughter.

I might hate Patterson’s stories. I might think his books are dumb. But there’s something to be said about that feeling you get when you read his books. I love that feeling, but that creates a bit of a dilemma for me. Do I buy Patterson’s books and contribute toward supporting the types of stories I despise? Or do I stop buying Patterson’s books and not experience the magic that his prose presents?

I think the answer is simple.

Pirate his works from the internet!

I’m just kidding. Don’t do that.

I’ll probably pick up his books from the library from time to time study the prose he uses and try to incorporate the same magic he creates into my writing, but I don’t think I’ll be collecting his books. I don’t want them, anyway.

I’ll be honest, I don’t enjoy most modern thriller authors. The only thriller authors I read are people like Raymond Chandler. I love their old-school, no-nonsense stories that get straight to the point and don’t have the characters going off on random side quests to help ladies give birth in abandoned buildings. That’s what thrillers should be. Fast, fun, and to the point.

Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day.

The post My Thoughts on James Patterson appeared first on Elliot Kessler.

But despite all that, there was one film that released recently that surpassed them all. One, low-budget, foreign movie that surpassed my already high expectations and managed to beat most movies releasing in the west, quickly becoming one of my personal favorites.

Enter Godzilla: Minus One.

Godzilla started out as a Japanese movie franchise, beginning with a thought-provoking film in 1954 about a giant, ancient monster attacking Japan. The film served as commentary on the bombing of Japan at the end of World War 2, showing how the development of new technologies by humans can unleash horrors beyond our imagination.

The success of this film spawned a lot of less-interesting sequels, in which Godzilla saves humanity time and time again by fighting a billion other monsters in cheesy action scenes. None of the sequels invoked the same feelings as the original, and they didn’t provide nearly as much thought-provoking material as the original.

Eventually, Hollywood managed to get their hands on the rights to the giant lizard, and they created their own movies that still couldn’t quite match the quality of the first.

Japan finally created another Godzilla film in 2016, many years after the last one, with fairly positive reception, but nothing super special. I have yet to see the movie, so I am unable to comment on the quality of the movie.

Finally, Japanese studios released another Godzilla movie this year titled Godzilla: Minus One. This film went back to the roots of the original, opening in 1945, when the second world war was coming to a close. The U. S. is quickly converging on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Japan’s only hope to slowing them down is their kamikaze pilots, who fly suicide missions with the intent of dying with honor.

We meet Koichi Shikishima, a kamikaze pilot who decides he doesn’t want to die. During his mission, he turns around and lands on a small island, telling the mechanics at the airbase that his plane malfunctioned. The mechanics are less than satisfied with his answer. But before anyone can do anything about it, a massive, prehistoric, dinosaur-like monster the locals call Godzilla appears on the beach and starts destroying the airbase. Shikishima gets in his plane to shoot down the creature as he walks past, but the pilot freezes up. Everyone on the island aside from Shikishima and one mechanic are killed by the massive beast before it returns to the water.

Shikishima goes back home to find that his town has been destroyed by the Americans and his parents are dead. He is blamed for the destruction because of his failure to go through with his mission. Eventually, Shikishima runs into a girl who is taking care of a child entrusted to her. Shikishima, the girl, and the child live together, making ends meet with what little they have. Shikishima gets a job cleaning up old mines from the war on a boat to provide for the girl and the child, but he is plagued with survivor’s guilt and a feeling of shame and dishonor for not doing his duty.

Now, this might all sound like a soap opera at that point, but don’t worry. There is plenty of Godzilla to go around. Eventually, the monster reappears, wrecking every ship it finds as it wanders the sea. It becomes clear the monster is making its way towards the mainland, and it’s much bigger and more powerful than before.

I never expected a movie about a giant, nuclear dinosaur to be one of the most compelling and emotional movies I’ve ever seen, but here we are. I came for some fun monster action, and I got so much more. The themes of duty and honoring life are strong and expressed masterfully. The characters feel real, and I enjoyed watching their journeys throughout the film. They grew, changed, and were forced to make difficult decisions, which is something I unfortunately don’t see very often anymore.

The monster itself, Godzilla, is more than just a huge, lumbering lizard swatting down buildings and roaring at fleeing civilians. This rendition of the beast is a terrifying force to be reckoned with. He’s not just a big dinosaur. He’s a monster who relentlessly tries to kill the humans. The opening of the movie feels something straight out of Jurassic Park. In the scene, Godzilla is a terrifying, unstoppable menace. When we later discovered that he had grown and become more powerful, I dreaded the next meeting the characters would have with the monster.

But the best thing about this version of the iconic monster is that he was made to represent all of Shikishima’s fears. Having Shikishima freeze up during the opening sequence, causing the deaths of the mechanics, was a genius move. It takes Shikishima’s guilt and shame of not accomplishing his duty as a kamikaze pilot and puts it on Godzilla, making the monster represent his internal struggle.

Most recent movies tend to be soulless cash-grabs filled with boring CGI battles and underdeveloped plots and ideas, including several of the Warner Bros. Godzilla films. Heck, almost all of the Japanese Godzilla films were meant to be cash-grabs, coasting off the success of the first film. But this movie is a break from all that noise. It’s interesting, it’s smart, it’s deep, and it’s moving. This is currently my favorite movie of the year, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for something a little more thought-provoking.

Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day.

The post Godzilla: Minus One | Review appeared first on Elliot Kessler.

This is something I’ve struggled with quite a bit. I would like to write a Christian science fiction story, but I never understood how without preaching to my audience, which is one of the biggest complaints I have with most modern fiction. If I explicitly taught my readers through my stories and sold it as “fiction”, I wouldn’t be any better than the writers I complain about.

But how? If you’re trying to preach through a story, how do you do that without preaching?

The answer is simple. You don’t.

The Shift is a Christian science fiction movie created by Angel Studios inspired by the book of Job. The film is explicitly Christian. The main character prays to get out of situations, the villain is clearly the Devil, and the film communicates Christian themes of hope, light, and love.

But the film doesn’t feel preachy. It talks about biblical themes and messages without explicitly talking about those things.

But how does it do this?

Well, to answer that question, I’ll compare this film to another piece of science fiction content that also released recently and tried to teach its audience, but came across as one of the most preachiest pieces of media I’ve ever seen: Doctor Who and The Star Beast.

Of course, Doctor Who isn’t Christian. In fact, it tries to teach ideology that opposes the Bible directly. However, The Shift and Doctor Who both try to accomplish the same thing: teaching through stories.

First, let’s look at The Shift.

What’s this movie about?

After a near fatal car crash, Kevin finds himself in a strange dystopian world parallel to his own reality where a man calling himself the Benefactor reigns supreme, and everyone fears him. The Benefactor tries to recruit Kevin into his army to conquer other realities, but this version of Kevin is the first to refuse. He finds himself stuck in hiding for five years in the dystopian reality, working to find a way back to his home and his wife.

This movie never explicitly teaches anything. Sure, it is biblical and is inspired by the book of Job. But the characters don’t stop the story to vaguely talk about faith and hope. Those themes are strongly weaved into the plot. If these ideas aren’t brought up, the story wouldn’t happen. They are crucial to the plot. Without hope, Kevin wouldn’t have the drive to move the story forward. Without faith, Kevin wouldn’t have anything to fight for.

Now, let’s look at Doctor Who. What was this episode about?

The Doctor runs into an old friend, Donna, on Earth. But because of previous events in the series, Donna cannot remember the Doctor or any of their adventures together or she’ll die. Meanwhile, an alien called the Meep crashes on the planet and hides from another alien race hunting it. The Doctor helps the Meep escape only to learn that he is actually evil. Now, the Doctor must thwart the Meep’s plans before he destroys all of London.

What’s this story trying to teach its audience?

We should be accepting of people, no matter who they are or what they identify as.

As you can probably tell, this message isn’t exactly integral to the plot. In fact, it defies it. The Doctor is accepting of the Meep and helps him only for him to turn out to be evil. That doesn’t sound like the writers are trying to teach anyone about accepting people.

Yet, they constantly have the characters discussing acceptance. A trans character is… there, I guess, and the Doctor… talks to her. A woman in a wheelchair is informed several times by the Doctor and the soldiers she is in charge of that she is accepted and she can do whatever anyone else can do (except go up a staircase, which is a point that’s brought up for some reason).

So, how do you preach to your audience without preaching to your audience?

Start with your message. Don’t write the story and put the message in later. The story should be the message. My novel, Liar’s Legacy, is about redemption and guilt. It’s weaved into the plot. If Sevdis doesn’t become the person he lied about and told everyone he already was, the galaxy is doomed to another bloody war. He must deal with the consequences of his regretful actions and repent of what he’s done to save the galaxy and his new friends.

The story is the message. It’s not a megaphone to put your message in. It’s not something you write and figure out what to say later. The message is a part of the plot, whether you thought of one or not.

If you want to sound preachy, tack a message onto your story after you’ve created the plot. If you want to write a good story, make sure the themes are integral and inseparable from your story.

That’s how I try to write my stories. I haven’t written Christian science fiction (although, I would like to), but I have written science fiction with Christian values. That’s what I really want more of, and that’s what I’m going to model by coming up with themes first and plot second.

Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day.

The post Christianity and Fiction appeared first on Elliot Kessler.

I know I’m late, but better late than never.

November has been an eventful month. It’s National Novel Writing Month, and I decided to take the challenge and do my best to write 50,000 words in thirty days. I hadn’t really attempted this challenge before, so I was very excited. Unfortunately, the story I came up with was half-baked and not very interesting, but at least I could write it and practice getting faster.

It was fun for the first week. I had a blast each time I sat down to write. But the next week I was schedule for more hours at work than normal. It was a pain, but I barely managed to scrape through that week while maintaining a consistent word count.

Then I started feeling bad. The fever came, and the spots soon after.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. I have chicken pox for the second time!

The fever was really bad, so I stopped writing for a week, and I still haven’t gotten back to it. The fever is gone, but the spots are still there. I should recover by next week, but that’s still a whole other week.

So, I’m probably not finishing NaNoWriMo this year, but that’s okay. I’ll still work on some other projects. I’ve been wanting to write some more short stories, and maybe I’ll write some more novellas. I really enjoyed writing The Eorum Chronicles: The Shadowman, and I think writing some sci-fi novellas like The Time Machine could be a blast.

My next few novels should release sometime next year. They’ll be the first novels of a series. I’m loving the first book so far, and I cannot wait to write the others. I am very excited for you to read them, and I hope you’re looking forward to them as well. But for now, I am still recovering, and I will get back at it soon.

Happy holidays!

Elliot Kessler

The post NaNoWriMo, Chicken Pox, and Overworking Myself appeared first on Elliot Kessler.

But there’s also a problem with so many authors putting their tips and instructions out into the wide world for beginning writers to read. They have tons of conflicting thoughts, opinions, and teachings. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen writers saying the “Write what you know” rule is bogus while several other authors swear by it. Some writers talk about how important it is to describe the physical aspects of your characters while other authors say it isn’t important at all.

This can get confusing. Especially when you’re a young writer like me who has no idea what he’s doing and is still searching for the “right” way to write a book.

However, searching for the proper way to tell a story is part of the problem. There is no “right” way to tell a story. Sure, plenty of authors will tell you they have it figured out. They’ll offer courses and classes. They’ll say “This is how you write a book, and all other ways are wrong.”

At first, I believed it. Then I found another author claiming they knew how to write a book. Then another. And another. Soon, I found that there were an infinite amount of “right” ways to tell a story.

I didn’t know where to go. What do I do? Who do I listen to? How do I learn the truth?

It turns out there is no proper way to write a book. Back when novels first became popular, the authors didn’t have any guidlines or rules. They didn’t have anyone telling them how to write a book. Nothing stopped them from putting whatever they wanted down on paper. Anything went. The closest thing they had to a how-to book were the other novels written by other authors. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was inspired by The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and so he wrote a book about a detective named Sherlock and his assistant names Watson. He didn’t Google “How to write a murder mystery.” He read the story he loved and wrote a story similar to it. He studied the story, not someone talking about it.

Does that mean reading “How to” books and articles is wrong? Of course not. I have learned a ton from those books and articles. If not for them, I wouldn’t know how to write in the first place. But don’t treat them like gospel. They don’t have all the answers. They’re a great place to learn about different experiences from different authors, but you shouldn’t go there looking for definitive answers.

But they shouldn’t only be treated as a jumping off point, either. Never stop reading those books. Read them, and reread them, and reread them again. Learn from other authors. Learn all the rules of writing and break every single one of them. As long as you write a killer story and have fun doing it, readers will find you and they’ll love the stories you have to tell.

Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day.

The post Write Whatever You Want appeared first on Elliot Kessler.

But despite this joy I find in storytelling, I’ve found myself stressing every time I sit at my desk to work on my books. I feel a headache start to come on, and I find it difficult to get words down on the page.

Why is this? What happened to my passion and joy?

Well, it turns out there’s a lot more to the business of creative writing than I thought there was. I’ve been writing these stories recently because I feel like I have to. I have found myself getting overwhelmed. There’s so much I need to do to turn my writing into a profitable business. I started everything all wrong. There is a lot that needs to be done with marketing that I don’t understand.

Point is, I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, and it’s starting to freak me out. I’ve begun looking at stories as content and assets instead of fun adventures through new worlds. My writing has become dry. I’ve found a lot of things wrong with it. I’m scared people won’t like it. I get angry when my stories aren’t perfect.

So, yeah. I’m a little stressed.

Because of this, I’m going to take a step back from my current projects and work on something else for a little while, which is convenient, because National Novel Writing Month is only a few weeks away!

What does the near future look like for my writing now?

I’m going back to my roots. I’m re-examining why I write so I can begin to understand the how better. I’m going to write short stories, work on finding inspiration, and putting the joy back into my storytelling.

The two projects I have in progress right now, which are a novel (the first of a trilogy) and the sequel to my Eorum novella, are stories that, I think, take themselves too seriously. I’ve forgotten how to have fun, and that’s going to change.

Henceforth, I shall go back to what I did with my short stories and Liar’s Legacy and reintroduce the silliness and witty humor, potentially to a higher degree!

Some of my favorite stories are the ones that don’t take themselves too seriously. That doesn’t mean serious stories are bad. I love authors like Philip K. Dick, Orson Scott Card, and Frank Herbert. But I also love Douglas Adams, and even J. R. R. Tolkien added plenty of humor to The Hobbit.

Stories are supposed to be fun, and I think I’m better at writing those stories than I am at the more serious ones.

What does this mean for my future books?

It means to prepare yourself for fast-paced action, fun characters, and terrible jokes!

As I said, I’m taking a step back from my current projects, and I’m going to work on something new for National Novel Writing Month. (Yes, I’m challenging myself to write a novel in one month as a stress reliever. Probably not the best plan, but that’s okay.)

I’m excited for this project. I’m not going to reveal anything here, but it’s the kind of story I’ve been wanting to write for a long time, but I couldn’t find the right idea. Now I have, and I’m about to blow your mind!

Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day.

The post Writing is Stressful Apparently appeared first on Elliot Kessler.