First novel ready for primetime, One month novel starts today!

So the hondapoclayse has nothing to do with this entry. It's just funny. My friend Ryan is a high school teacher, this was his car and yes he drove it to work.

Well after sometime of tinkering and a complete red inked overhaul the third and {my final draft of my first novel} Hunting the Moon Tribe is done. Finished it yesterday and I am stoked. It has found a publisher and I’m excited to say it is afterbirth books out of Seattle. If your one of the people who follows my blog you already know that. I’ll have to do another draft once the crew at Afterbirth get out their red pens and honestly I can’t wait to work with them.

I was putting in 12 hour editing days this week and fixed a lot of minor problems. Thankfully the structure of the novel was very strong. The biggest problems came from the translation from screenplay to novel. I wrote Moon Tribe as a screenplay in 2002 and in my mind some parts existed as a movie in my head. Screenplays are written in the present tense and novels are not.

I found myself slipping into screenplay tense throughout and that was the biggest problem. It’s fixed and it reads much stronger now. In the end the novel of Hunting the Moon Tribe is a novel and a much bigger canvas than the screenplay. I’m proud of it and I hope you’ll buy it, read and enjoy it.

It is a loving tribute combining my two favorite genres of film. Growing up we had a local station(well Indianapolis) channel four that had a horror host Sammy Terry on Friday nights. I would nap on Fridays so I could stay up late and watch it. But I also taped it on our betamax in case I fell asleep. What I discovered on the videos after ST was a show called Blackbelt theater.

Old school Shaw bros films like Chinese super ninjas, Master killer and Spearman of Death were some of my favorites. Now I love the fantastic Wuxia Pan fantasy films like Chinese Ghost story, Bride with white hair, Hero , House of Flying Daggers, musa and my personal favorite Ching Siu Tung’s 1982 classic Duel to the Death.

I don’t think a knowledge of these films is needed to enjoy Moon Tribe but being able to hear the sound effects in your head when the punches are thrown and swords are swung wont hurt the experience.

This novel has vampires, Kungfu masters, Red Guard Chinese agents, a Sect of ancient Chinese vampire hunters, knife throwing Chinese acrobats, giant winged mastodons, dragons, vampire wraiths, a two headed sex slave who lives with the shape shifting were-tiger warrior at Madme Yu’s House of Freaks, headless giants, Mountain spirits, Demon possessed swords and trees, kungfu zombie vampire warriors starved over a thousand years, and battles between the goddess of water and an ancient Chinese god of war under the command of the vampire master Huwan-tun. I had fun I think you will too.

My plan is to put up a blog just for Moon Tribe. It will have back stories, character bios, prequel and expanded universe short stories, ordering and distribution information.

So what’s Next now? Well afterbirth and I have to clean-up the second edition of my short story collection Screams from a Dying World since it actually is coming out before Moon Tribe. Most of that work is done, I’ve turned in final drafts that have already been very well edited. Afterbirth will have to do their pass but shouldn’t be painful.

July to August I’m making my first attempt at a one month novel. My friend Gina does this and it works for her. Her last one month novel House of Fallen Trees is her best work. I wrote the first draft of Moon Tribe in three months while working, it’s a much longer more detailed epic piece than the lean, mean punk rock themed horror novel I’m busting out next.

Two of those weeks I’ll be back in the Midwest visiting family so I may go a few weeks into august. I think I’m ready, I’ve outlined the sucker, gone on long bike rides thinking about the book. Of course once you start telling the story some times it goes on trips you could not plan for.

My Science Fiction novel is not dead. I’ve got about 45,000 words done, half mark for sure. It just became a little more research heavy than I expected, what I thought was going to be a simple story has really grown beyond what I was expecting. I think I needed a break from it. A lot of writers wisdom will tell you not to do that but whatever. I really want to bust out this horror novel and I promise I’ll finish the Sci-fi one. My best friend Randall is dying to read that and I think he would crush me if I don’t finish it.