D.T. Neal's Blog

In the never-ending circular firing squad of social media, I have glimpsed threads where people are apparently pissed at authors for trying to make a living from their writing.

Damn those writers for, like, having to support themselves. They're just supposed to give their work away for free, simply for the joy of writing itself, which is reward enough, right?

Lordy. People are exhausting. The sense of entitlement is staggering. People steal music, books, everything they can get their mitts on, and then they still complain.

Spoiler warning: you can't support indie creators AND *avoid* paying for their creations.

I don't know if my brain has just been rebounding since my ~10-month fallow period (fueled by stress, frustration, and failure) but I keep coming up with good ideas I have to act upon, writer-wise.

So, away I'm flying. I'm in the place of having to triage the ideas I'm having in terms of ones I can blast through right now, versus ones that'll need to marinate longer on the stovetop of my mind.

This is all good. I'd rather have more ideas than fewer, but it's kind of trippy how much is coming down the pike for me. I've much rather have a flood of ideas than a drought, so I'm doing my best to navigate it efficiently.

As ever, this is just a tease -- you know I never spill the proverbial beans on any WIP, but it's a solid idea that I'll give life to. Must be done.

And I'm not sure if it's just a reaction to my shitty life circumstances or what, but I'd be a fool to waste the time I currently have, so I'm running with these ideas.

I had some more good book ideas flood my brain over the past couple of days, specifically a five-book series I definitely need to write.

Fully intend this to be indie stuff, not trad. So, there's that. I'm somewhat gratified (despite the overall enshittification of my life right now) that the ideas are still rolling in.

It just feels good to be in a productive place, despite my situation. I'll take the wins where I can, these days.

What I may do with this five-book series is write all five books in sequence, so I can keep the overall arcs nicely coordinated.

I did that with the first three books of my Shutterclique series -- I wrote them one after another, which helped. That series is to be a seven-book series, but after writing the first three books sequentially, I worked on other things, mostly because I was mentally exhausted from that particular universe. Obviously, I need to write the remaining four books of that series, but after a few years of not being in that world, I'll need to re-read the first three books to get myself back in that place.

I mean to not have that issue with this five-book series I have in mind. I'll just blast through them and ideally get all five drafted. Then I'll take my time with revision, knowing at least that the novels are all tidily sequenced.

Gotta go where my writerly brain wants to go, alas.

I don't need the world; I just need 1,000 to 10,000 diehard fans who love my books. Is that asking too much? Apparently it is.

Failing that, I just need one (1) employer out there to hire me. Is that asking too much? Apparently it is.

The constant rejection I endure is stupefying. I feel like I owe the world an apology for not dying, yet. WTF?

None of my various networks have moved the proverbial needle an iota. I'm roundly fucked at every turn. What's especially frustrating is my victory conditions are so low, and yet still out of reach.

To the lurkers on this feed, enjoy a nice slab of Schadenfreude from me. I've never felt more ill-equipped to weather this world. What a terrible time to NOT be a ruthlessly opportunistic sociopath, I guess.

I don't have it in me to bullshit and/or manipulate people for my own ends. I don't use AI (for either my job applications or my fiction-writing). I don't lie about my work history (which is good enough to have gotten me interviews over the past several years).

Seems like so many are working their scams and cons, and I'm trying to just be true to who I am, despite getting screwed over because of it.

I can't pretend to be other than my almost-56 years of age (next Thursday, if you're wondering).

People talk about reinventing themselves, but I like who I am. I've worked hard to become who I am, and it pisses me off that who I am is apparently not what the world wants.

It's like the thing I've said before, where I feel like a ghost who hasn't died, yet. Fuuuuck...

What's one to think, anymore? Where there's life, there's hope, right? Is that what we all cling to? I'm not particularly platitudinous, but even I sometimes think that -- hope only fades with death.

It's why the various religious fictions out there often trade in afterlives and life beyond this life. Hope springs eternity. Never mind that most people wouldn't even know what to do with immortality if it bit them on the ass.

Both the tragedy and promise of the human condition is bound up in our mortality. We only have so much time, even if we waste so much of it.

With my birthday come up next week, pushing me ever-deeper into middle age, I'm feeling all of that a lot.

From my misfit vantage point -- peering in from the outside of what so many experience as their ordinary lives, it's difficult to know how to feel or process it.

A therapist might look at my writing as a psychological response/reaction to childhood trauma -- or taking refuge from a harsh world through fantasy, whether literary or not. I'm good at world-building because of that instinct, I guess.

I don't know. My goals for the rest of '26 are threefold: 1) land a good-enough gig somewhere; 2) sell more books; 3) grow my audience.

That's about it. Failing to accomplish these things, I'm really going to feel like a pre-ghost, fading into oblivion before I'm even dead.

Well, hell, this is my 300th post on this blog, for what that's worth. I'm rolling on my WIP, which continues to proceed nicely. It's one of the only bright spots in my life right now.

My birthday's in 11 days. I feel my age more keenly than ever, given the endless job-hunting I'm doing, the constant rejections. It takes an act of professional willpower not to be like "Does your company have anybody working for you who's over 45 years of age?" Of course they do, and I can never ask that, but in the face of the sotto voce ageism bias, it's still always apparent to me.

Two days into the new novel, with 3000 words already drafted. Makes me happy that it's already proceeding so smoothly.

After having such a long fallow period, I wasn't sure if my brain would be ready to dive in, but it knew just what to do.

Despite all the stress and turmoil, I'm happy that my fiction-writing mind is well-trained enough to do what it does without fail.

As per my practice of the past few years, I'm angling for about 70-80K words for this book, which should be just right for the story I have in mind.

Hexvessel | A Cabin in Montana

I had a folk horror story idea pop into my head yesterday, and while you know I'm not going to spill about it here, I will say that the idea is compelling enough that I'm going to write the first draft of the novel next month, a kind of birthday present to myself in otherwise desperately shitty life-circumstances.

The idea's solid and, should I succeed in writing this one to my satisfaction, would come out in '27. You'll know it when you see me marketing it then.

I'm just pleased that a solid idea came to me out of the blue like that. Much like a food craving, it's one of those things that when it happens like that, I can't/won't ignore it or otherwise shelve it or delay it! The story wants to live, so I'll give it life.

As someone who has a strong fondness for folk horror and a sense of it, vibe-wise, I'm hopeful I can write a kickass novel in that subgenre (or, I suppose I should say, ANOTHER kickass novel in that subgenre, since I still feel that THE CURSED EARTH has yet to find its proper audience, despite delivering a trippy slab of folk horror fun to readers).

Anyway, this new WIP will, if I do it right, knock it out of the ballpark, in terms of representing American folk horror narratively in a novel. Again, it hinges on me crushing the concept I have in mind.

Given how crazy things are in the country these days, it'll be a nice window into the madness of the moment.

I'll admit to more than a bit of Schadenfreude over the AI-written book, SHY GIRL, leading to Hachette Book Group canceling that book, and the accompanying uproar around it.

As a long-suffering indie human writer who bleeds for everything he writes, I am satisfied to see this transpire. Whether here or elsewhere, I've groused about the AI "word pimps" (I won't call them "writers") using AI to bang out books for them.

Such a thing will always be anathema to me, so if/when there's reader/customer/consumer backlash against it, I'm gratified.

Will that continue, or will AI slop become normalized and people will just consumer word pimp stories more over time? Not sure.

It won't change my approach. I still write books the old-fashioned, human way -- idea/concept, writing, drafting, revising, rewriting, and finally finishing.

Some people rightly point out that only shit writers need fear AI slop -- that those shit writers will be the ones most affected by it. And that may be true.

I don't fear AI word pimps -- they tend to churn out drek that has nothing to do with what I do; I'm just annoyed that their efforts will potentially lead people to just think everyone's a word pimp, when we're so not.

Even though my indie dreams have never been close to being realized, I still love the very human process of writing, and will continue doing it until I die. As a lifelong Romantic, the romantic nature of the literary life still holds appeal to me, however withered my hopes and dreams have gotten over the decades.

My hope is that the AI slop and word pimpery will drive discerning readers to appreciate actual human writers more than perhaps they did before. We'll see.

If you like human writing across genres (specifically, fantasy, science fiction, horror, weird fiction, which are my stomping grounds), do considering perusing some of my work, reading it, and rating/reviewing it:

dtneal.com

At least you'll be supporting the work of an actual human being, for what that's worth these days.

The cosmos rewarded me by apparently nixing a post I just made. Talk about symbolic.

I'm not going to re-write that post, but point taken, cosmos.