The Gods Among Them has now officially risen from the abyss and been in the world for a week. Every time a new book comes out I feel a mix of excitement and nervousness. Excitement because can’t wait for people to read the book and experience the story. I get nervous because you never know how people will react to a book. What if everyone hates it? What if I pushed the limit a little too far? There are so many questions that rattle around in my head when I new books comes out.
With this book specifically however, the excitement overshadowed the nervousness. Not only do I think The Gods Among Them features some of my best writing yet, it also happens to be my 10th published book.
For someone who wrote novel after novel, sent them only to agents and got rejected for 15 years, reaching this milestone is surreal. For the longest time I didn’t know I could submit books directly to publishers. I thought the only way to see your book published was through an agent so that’s what I did. Eventually I found smaller publishers who accepted work directly from the author and things took off quickly.
I’d like to say having published ten books makes me a veteran in the horror publishing world, but I’m still very much a newcomer. I still learn things every day and I’m always looking for that next piece of advice to add to my arsenal and I thank all of those writers who have been at this longer than me who have helped me along the way.
One piece of advice I read a few years ago that has really stuck with me was from horror legend Joe R. Lansdale who said that you should “write like everyone you know is dead.” He didn’t mean write like you want them to be dead or to image them dying, he meant write like no one you know will ever read your work. If you do that, you’ll just be writing the story that needs to be written. You won’t be think about your mom reading you work as you write the next scene. Instead, you’re just writing the story as it needs to be told. I if I thought about my mom reading some of the things I’ve written I might censor myself in stead of letting to story be free.
With The Gods Among Them I really took that advice to heart. There are a few difficult scenes in this book, but they needed to be there to tell the story. I took Joe’s words to heart and wrote the story as if everyone I knew was dead. They’ll never read it so I don’t have to hold back. I think the book really benefited from that line of thinking. I don’t think I’ve ever held back in what I’ve written before but the scenes in this book in particular to a darker turn in some places because the story dictated it. And I really needed to keep that advice in mind when I was writing.
I hope that didn’t scare you away from checking it out. I honestly think this is my best work to date and I’m excited people are getting to read it now for the first time. Early reader reviews so far have been fantastic. Here’s a few quotes from some fellow authors:
“This will be on numerous Book of the Year lists, guaranteed.“ - Steve Stred, multiple-award nominated author of 'Mastodon,' 'Churn the Soil,' and 'When I Look At the Sky, All I See Are Stars.'
“This book will tear your heart out” -Douglas Ford author of Who Dies First
“Keep the lights on for this one; you’re in for a wild read!” -Ruthann Jagge author of Delevan House
“This bad boy has teeth even sharper than the Chicago winter in which it’s set.” -Blaine Daigle author of A Dark and Endless Sea
"Cosmically beautiful and hauntingly human“ -Candace Nola author of Demons in my Bloodstream
Thanks for giving this post a read and thanks for checking out The Gods Among Them. As always if you’re looking for signed copies of anything I’ve written, they are all available on my shop. The Gods Among Them and And Then I Killed All The Ghosts are currently on sale for pretty cheap if you want the new ones get them for less right now.
I have some more news coming very soon so I’ll be back then.
Until next time…
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