Norman Christof's Blog

The little gamer deep down inside sure hopes it does.

Or is it just wishful thinking on my part?

I’ve tried so many things, to break my out of my writing blocks that playing games woudn’t be the most ridiculous of them. I’ve read countless books on the topic, tried multiple types of organization techniques, everything from Google Calendar to Bullet Journals. The bullet journal approach is my latest, so I’m holding out hope that this will be the one that finally tips the scales in my fa...

I want you to imagine for a moment a few feelings of excitement. Something that you can genuinely get excited about. Think, about how exciting it would be to have an entire novel outline laid out before you complete with chapter titles, synopsis, commentary, imagery, sensory and character reveal details. All thirty or so of those scenes all laid out, nice and neat … color coded and ready to have an interesting, insightful and fun story written for each one.

A story that will come easily and f...

So, here’s something a little bit fun and frivolous. My father was a school teacher/principal of a two room school (that no longer exists) in the small south-western town of Courtright Ontario calledSaintCharles Borromeo. I attended the school for grades one and two before moving to a different school. My father Norman published a little creative writing newsletter every weekcalled “The Little World of St. Charles.” The articles were all submitted by students of the school. I happen to still...

Or, at least with authors.

I would assume, that ever since Amazon implemented the Kindle Unlimited (KU) program, it’s been keeping track of how many pages people have been reading on their kindles. Currently, that’s how they know how much to pay their authors. I know, because I watch my sales figures, like a crack addict waiting for their next fix. I say “assume”, because I can’t be sure that they were really counting pages read during the early days of KU...

America’s Sunset, my first foray into the world of prepper fiction hit the Kindle store today, and I must admit to feel mixed emotions. It’s been a long time coming, and a moment for which I will be very grateful. Irregardless of how the book does on the sales charts, it feels pretty damn good to see it in the store. It’s been a long road to get the book there, and I won’t go into all the reasons for the long time in publishing, but let’s just hope the next one takes a fraction of the time. A...

Which means what? I suppose, to everyone it could mean something different, but to me, it’s pretty obvious. It means, just get started. It means getting past the fear, and the indecision, and all the reasons for not doing whatever it is you need to do. Basically, for me that means stop thinking. Stop thinking, and just go. Leverage the momentum. Do you ever notice, that just so long as you can start doing something, that thething; w...

It may seem somewhat presumptuous of me to suggest, that I know what it means to be a writer, but to my detractors I’d ask the question … why wouldn’t I? Of course, as of today, I’ve never made the New York Times best sellers list, and it’s inconceivable that I will any time in the near future. I have made it to a few top seller lists in a number of rather obscure Amazon book niches so far, albeit for short bursts of time. Irregardless, I do think I have...

I’m an author and a huge fan of The Walking Dead series, so I can respect the difficult position the writers of the series are in. Suspense is essential to any good story, and for a viewer, knowing that any character can die at any time keeps you constantly on the edge of your seat. It amps up the suspense like nothing else. Just ask George R.R. Martin, and any die hard fan of the Game of Thrones. In the spirit of a no spoiler post, I won’t give anything away, but if you’re the one and on...

So I was checking out the competition the other day, and I finally started to understand why none of you are reading my books. Hey, these other books are really good. So just, to show I’m not a sore sport about it all, I’ve included some links at the bottom here of some lists of pretty good zombie books. Here’s to hoping I end up on some of them at some point. You faithful reader could help in that regard, by checking out my books on the right there. Yea, they’re a little different then t...

Wow, looks like this is the last day of July, and I suppose this is a long weekend coming up. Today, I’m supposed to go sailing with Wayne and Joyce at around 9:30. That should be fun. I’ve always wanted to go sailing with them, just to see how they do things. I’ve been on other boats for sure, and everyone has sort of their own way of doing things, but Wayne is a guy I’ve learned a lot about sailing from, and while he’s come out on my boat to give me sailing tips, I’ve never been out on...