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When it comes to my writing – or even planning my writing – I’ve always been the type to want to jump right in and start putting words to a page. Granted, I’ve always been a fan of outlining (aka plotting) and I swear by it most times. But one thing that I have never done, nor would ever see myself doing, is building character profiles. I’ve always thought it was some hand-wavey nonsense that never really added to the story, and was just some fluffy way of getting to know your characters better. Or, at least, that’s the feeling… Read More »*Scoff* Character Profiles, who needs them…or do you?

Okay, so I stole the trademarked phrase from BeachBody – so sue me. Actually no, BeachBody, please DON’T sue me. I make no money here, so there’s not much to gain from that. But jokes aside, I use that line as a phrase of endearment so to speak, because it applies perfectly to my current feelings about my goal of becoming a successful indie author one day. I’ll talk more about all that a little later on in this post. On a side note, I do in fact own BeachBody workout DVDs, they’re fantastic and I lost thirty pounds last… Read More »Decide. Commit. Succeed.

For the last year or so, I’ve narrowed my focus to short fiction, in an effort to improve my craft on a smaller scale. I feel like this has been tremendously helpful in many aspects, and it’s produced some short stories that I’ve been very pleased with. The last couple stories have been somewhere between eight and ten thousand words, and typically broken up into multiple installments. This has allowed me to practice writing in scenes, where three or four scenes would make up the entirety of the story itself. I’ve found that this is an effective way to have… Read More »The best bad choice.

Sounds like it could be one of those late-night advertisements for a personal injury law firm, doesn’t it? If you’ve been injured, you deserve compensation. Call the law offices of Reacher, Bosch and Fletcher – for your no obligation consultation.  Jokes aside, I’m actually quite excited about my new thriller, which debuted my newest character – Joe Fletcher – in my latest short story entitled The Delivery Man. When I first had the idea for the story, I didn’t even think about a character series. I simply had the idea for the plot, knew I needed someone to fill the protagonist role, and… Read More »Reacher, Bosch…and Fletcher?

It’s been a while since my last post, I know. But it’s for a legit reason, because there have been gobs of other stuff filling my free hours for the past several months now. I won’t get into too much detail here, but the primary time-hogger of late has been something I haven’t done since college. Studying. Yes, unfortunately you read correctly. As some (or all) of you may know, I’m a project engineer by day, working for an automation firm that specializes in factory/plant control systems. And sometime around March of this year, I made the decision, with the… Read More »Countdown.

In a previous blog post, I indicated that I would be putting my novel on hold and switching gears. At the time, I had a rough idea for a short story that I wanted to explore, and decided to make it the subject of my next project. Although it took me several months to actually commit and put some thought and effort into it, I managed to finally do that this week. The result is the first of three installments of my brand new short story, Tranquility. I plan to have the next installment completed and posted here within the… Read More »Moon dust.

I figured it would be fun to include more entries on the process of my writing and research, rather than just the sparse announcements that mark the completion of a piece. So buckle up, and prepare to enter the exciting and fun-filled world of Mike’s Fiction Adventure (trademark pending). I spend ALOT of time reading – about writing.  Most of the material that I immerse myself in are blogs by various authors, some traditionally published and some self-published. A quick digression here. For those that are unaware, allow me to fill you in on the differences between traditional publishing and self-publishing,… Read More »Story engineering.

Let me start by saying ‘Thank You!’ to all of the people (probably few) that took the time to read my first two installments of The Architects, which I released here on the blog over the past four-five months. I’ve come to a few realizations, and learned a few hard lessons since the start. First and foremost, finding the time to write is next to impossible for me. Juggling a full time engineering career, being in a metal band, devoting time to a daily workout (shocking, I know), and spending time with friends here and there, it leaves precious little time to sit down… Read More »Humble beginnings.

Needless to say, I did not expect that it would take nearly four months to complete the next chapter of the story – so thank you for your patience! It’s definitely been difficult trying to find time to sit down and write, but I managed to knock it out bit by bit when I could. I’ve literally spent the entirety of today engulfed in writing, so I’m a bit short on commentary at the moment – my brain needs some rest. But here she is, the next installment of my debut Sci-Fi novel. Enjoy! The Architects, Chapter 2 BACK TO ALL BLOG POSTS

The inaugural post!  For those that may not know what this is all about, allow me to recap: About six months ago, I started toying with the idea of writing a novel, and had the smallest, teeniest little nugget of an idea for a story.  It was safe to say that if I wanted to actually turn this shred of a thought into the next 100,000-word New York Times bestseller, then I had a lot of work to do. Knowing virtually nothing about novel writing, or even storytelling, I felt completely overwhelmed with this far-fetched goal of mine.  So I… Read More »One small step for man.