Doug Goodman

My computer takes forever to boot.  I think it has something to do with a. being a PC and b. me not knowing how to set it up better.  The result of the situation is that I have some time to kill while waiting for various beeps and grunts to finish their electric gurgle from my hard drive.  So I was walking around the room and my books caught my eye. 

Man, have I got a weird collection.  Not eclectic or refined.  Just odd.  My top shelf has my college books and some other things.  They make me sound smart.  If I was still single, I would probably show this shelf off to try to impress girls.  The second shelf (from the top) is devoted to childhood awards and toys.  (Does anyone remember what a Battle Beast is?)  The third shelf is apparently where I keep a lot of books that I personally like.  The bottom two shelves are mostly tapes, CDs, assorted manuals, and collections (Tolkien, Sherlock Holmes).

But back to that top shelf.  A closer look reveals (right to left):

Tomas Rivera's ...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him (In English and Spanish!)

Candide (True story - in high school we had to make food based on Candide.  I don't remember what I made, but somebody baked a cake butt.  No bull.  It was a cake made to look like a gluttous maximous.  I think they did a very good job.)

Cliff's Notes for The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost (I swear I only used them as a resource.  I did actually read those books.  They are among my favorites.)

Canto Al Pueblo (No clue.  It was college.)

The DaVinci Code  (Interestingly, this book is right next to...)

Paradise Lost (err...John Milton's Complete Poems and Major Prose, copyright 1957)

ICS 300 and 400 Training Manuals (I guess in case incident command needs to be set up in my study)

Blood Meridian (Totally badass book)

Dorling Kinderslety Handbooks:  Dogs ("The most acessible recognition guides")

Barron's Australian Cattle Dogs

The History of Farting (There goes my chance of ever looking refined)  (And thanks, hon.  I love this book.  Hilarious!)

A Beautiful Mind

The Canterbury Tales

Jurassic Park

William Wadsworth (Guarded by General Grievous)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (another favorite)

Asimov's Robot Dreams

Spenser's The Faerie Queene (I.  did not.  read.  the Cliff's Notes!)

Chretien De Troyes' Arthurian Romances

Lawman's Brut

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner RULZ!)

The Best of HP Lovecraft:  Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre (with highlights for "In the Vault," "The Silver Key," "The Colour Out of Space," and "The Thing on the Doorstep")

Hank the Cowdog (still the best detective books ever)

and

Dinosaurs of North America by Helen Roney Sattler, illustrated by Anthony Rao (One of my first great dinosaur books, and one that filled the greatest requirement of pre-teen boys:  jaw-droppingly insane illustrations)

So that's me.  Somewhere between A History of Farting, some embarrassing Cliff's Notes on Paradise Lost, and Dinosaurs of North America, you get this weird writer/cadaver dog handler.  I like it.

Okay, so I kind of ran out of gas on the last book I wrote somewhere in the rewrite phase. I got to the point where I got reviews in from some family members, made changes to the book based on their very good inputs...and then I started wondering if the whole setup is wrong.  For whatever reason, I also was not digging the voice.  So I started a complete rewrite to the novel and lost traction.  I decided I needed/wanted to work on something else.  Which brings me to novel number 3.

This novel is my take on a post-apocalypse.  But instead of being about full-fledged adults dealing with the loss of their society, I decided I wanted to write about teens whose world falls out from under them.  So far, I think it has been a good direction to take.  Some of these teens are becoming more adult while others are still firmly in terra teen-firma.

The first thing to decide before writing any post-apocalypse story is whether or not you reveal what caused the post-apocalypse.  I am thinking of The Road, which only alludes to a nuclear war but does not give any details.  This is the "War of the Worlds" direction (WotW was written with very little full-disclosure moments -- most of the book centered around the war's affect on the primary characters and did not describe, for instance, what was happening in France or what the Prime Minister was doing to stop the Martians). 

Then there is the why and how.  I don't want to get into it too much, but I am an animal lover and a monster lover.  Post-apocalypse or not, these kids need to be fighting some monsters!  So in this one the creatures are monstercized animals.  Dogs, cats, cattle.  I'm sure there is a monstercized goldfish in there somewhere, too.  My question to you, though, is what animal do you find monstrous or that you think would make a good monster?  Feel free to respond in the comments or email me.

Hello.  It has been a while.  The last post was in July, but hopefully the posts should turn up more regularly now.  I am going to do some obedience work with Ryder, and Mojo and I will be attending a cadaver dog seminar in early November.  I am working on a second novel, and I am also building a few short stories as well.

As part of all this, I am dusting off the website.  I cleared out some HTML cobwebs and brushed off the old code.  I changed out the monthly story for the first time in too long.  (Go check it out if you get a chance.  I have Queen Anne's Corpse up.  Since Arkham Tales is now listed as a "dead market," I thought it was time to post the Corpse to my website.  Besides, it will be up in October, and how can you not post a story about corpses in October?) 

I have heard several times writers referring to published novels as not so much being finished projects but being in a state of doneness at the time.  I completely get that.  When posting Queen Anne's Corpse, I had to resist the urge to rewrite.  I changed one word, but that's it, I swear!

A couple of weeks ago, I also re-read about five of my old short stories that never published and sent them off as submissions.  They still sounded good, so I thought "Why not?"  Already, oneof them has been rejected, which oddly enough has a "back to the grind" feel to it.  Good to be back.  Now let's see if any of those rejections can change into acceptances.

I am happy to report that I have a new story available for purchase.  Last Ride of the Headless Horseman has been published in the State of Horror anthology series, Texas edition.  (Officially titled "State of Horror:  Texas.") 

Man, I am glad to publish Last Ride in this anthology.  Sometimes it just feels like a good fit from the onset.  Last Ride is a ghost story about El Muerto, the infamous headless horseman of South Texas.  Some people believe he still roams South Texas around Alice to this day.  If you get a chance, read up about El Muerto and the history surrounding this headless horseman.  The research will suck you into this fascinating story of Texas Rangers and border wars.  (Not to mention, it will "augment" Last Ride of the Headless Horseman.)   

I share this anthology with four talented writers:  Mark Mellon, Jeff Parrish, Brian Johnson, and writer/editor Armand Rosamilia.  I have read some of their stories in the anthology, and they are all horror stories served with a side of Texas-flavored humor.

I have listed below the websites where the book can be published.  If you can spare a few dollars, please support your local sheriff...err, writer...

Smash Words -$3 Ebook

Amazon - $3 Kindle

Lulu - $8 print and $3 Ebook!

Yesterday was a good day for many reasons.  It was my birthday.  My family went out to eat.  I got some really cool gifts (and even cooler cards).  I received many wonderful well-wishes on Facebook.  But I also finished preparing the review copy of my novel.  While no aspect of triumph has compared to the accomplishment of the rough draft, finishing the peer review copy felt pretty spectacular, too.

Now, hopefully, while some friends and family are reviewing the book, I am going to try to get some yardwork done, catch up on some television, and spend some gift cards.  I am going to try not to look over people's shoulders and harass them with a thousand requests of "what do you think so far?"  I am also going to try not to start writing any short stories.  No promises there, though.  Rewriting is not writing, and ideas have been cramming my head for the past six months.  It is probably time for a creative purging of the mind.

For everyone who is participating in the peer review (every time I say that, I sound way too corporatized), you have my many thanks for your time and thoughts.

Writers can find inspiration anywhere.  For many, they are inspired by people they know.  (This is bad news for any of my Facebook friends when I am in my horror-writing mindset.)  I am heavily inspired by my wife and family.  Books also inspire me.  The novel I am working on was only possible because my wife suggested Laura Ingalls Wilder's "The Long Winter" to me.  So in regards to the novel I'm drafting, it was influenced both by my wife and by books.

I am a writer who is also inspired by music.  I am probably one of the few people who owns a copy of "Metallica:  The Complete Lyrics" because I admire the strength and conviction of the song lyrics.  (This was from a time before you could download the lyrics from any song ever created off the Internet.)  And if you know me long enough, I will eventually give a soapbox lecture about how violent and criminal are the stories of country music vs. rock music.  I am inspired by the tropes of country music.  The Road Goes on Forever (And The Party Never Ends).  Cocaine Blues.  A Country Boy Can Survive.  The Coward of the County.  Ol' Red. 

Texas musicians in particular inspire me.  Waylon Jennings.  Willie Nelson.  Pat Green.  Robert Earl Keen.  SRV.  But Texas in general influences me.  Its history, its politics, its people.  Its unique blend of the modern and the mythical.  I find names of characters being plucked from the annals of the Texas Revolution. 

Science also influences me.  I am blessed to work for a Government agency that provides lectures on scientific exploration.  I try to attend them as often as possible.  Yesterday I attended a lecture on exoplanets.  The minutae of detail that goes into the study of exoplanets is mindboggling.  I also pick up little articles of interest here and there.  A website called io9 always contains some fun new snippet of scientific discovery.  This past week io9 covered a story about the medicinal properties of camel urine.  Some scientists believe camel urine might have cancer-fighting agents in it.  This inspired me to go back to my novel, which is about mammoth herding.  I had to add something in there about collecting mammoth urine.  This got me thinking about the "industry" of mammoth urine.  How is it processed?  Who would buy it and why?  How do mammoth ranchers collect mammoth urine?  Would they collect it from both the bulls and the cows? 

Camel urine.  It's what inspires me.  What inspires you?

Why do my posts have a religious theme this week?  It wasn't intentional...

A couple days ago I received a preliminary edit from my editor-in-chief (my wonderful wife).  She had some really good points about characterization and flow, which I have hopefully addressed and will continue to address as I work through another draft of the book, which is on version 4.0.  (I think versions 1 and 2 got me to the rough draft.)

To help me with keeping everything straight, I am developing a bible.  Not "The Bible" in a religious sense, but "a" bible, which is used by network writers (and presumably some novelists) to keep things straight. 

The kinds of things that go into the bible are characters, settings, modes of travel, special posessions, etc.  The bible can be a very useful tool as it keeps a writer from saying that the protagonist has a fear of heights in Chapter 1, and then having the protagonist easily scaling Mt. Rushmore in Chapter 28. 

I did not set out to do "world building" when I started writing this novel.  My goal was to write a kind of pioneer's space western, a Little House on the Praerie meets Firefly, but without the war.  By adding the science fiction elements, though, I ended up building some worlds.  So this bible is tailored towards what planets do people live on, what are the locals on those planets, and what kind of strange vehicles do they drive?  What kind of equipment is used and how does it work?  It is the sort of thing that I did not record while writing the novel -- and I would not encourage anyone to write that way -- it is much better to let the writing come out freely rather than stop it for bible-making.  But I think collecting the data will help me as I edit the book.  Already I have almost three pages of bible written.  Maybe now I need to add a few "thou shalt nots" into it...

When I was in college, I thought Thanksgiving was a good time to see my family, visit a few friends I hadn't seen since August, watch some football, and of course...get ahead on my homework.  By my sophomore year, I realized that I would NEVER accomplish that final goal.  I only bring this up because now at Thanksgiving, I think of seeing family, cooking turkey, trying to get some good deals on Black Friday, putting up Christmas decorations, watching football, and of course...getting some much needed writing done.  I have to fight the urge for the writing.  I know it will never happen.  Sure, if I get a chance to edit a few things - great!  But real, actual writing?  It is better to spend time relaxing with family than worrying about trying to find time to write.  And not to worry.  November 29 is almost here.  I can start writing again then.

I can't believe I'm finished.  310 pages, 76,000 words.  The rough draft is complete.  It feels a bit like finishing an ultramarathon.  There is a lot of emotion and spent energy.  This novel took a lot longer to finish than I expected.  About 12 months, when I was originally aiming for 3-6.  But I hope that because it is tailored from two short stories that continuity will not be as daunting a hurdle as it was with my first novel.  For now, though, it is time to step away from the book, maybe read a little and work on some other story ideas that have been begging to be released.  Get away from this novel long enough to give me a fresh look at it before I begin the rewrite.

Breaking into writing can be a real up-and-down affair.  Case in point is the last fwe weeks for me.  I had one story (Stitching the Vamp - originally published in Tales of the Talisman) that was not rejected, but is being held in case a second volume of the anthology is published.  I have another story that is going to be published in an e-anthology promoting the first year of publication for that website.  As seen on my homepage, the anthology that was going to house my story, "Last Ride of the Headless Horseman," is going under, so it looks like that one won't be published either.

Last one returned is one of the greatest stories never published.  I receive better rejection letters for this story than any acceptance letter I have received (with the exception of the phrase "We would like to purchase your story.")  My latest rejection letter came from a pro-rate fantasy magazine.

"Please accept my apologies for holding your story so long while we considered it.  (Note:  I submitted the story in May 2009.)  I was very impressed with your story -- it's splendidly written, fast paced, and you have a real flair for characters...I hope you'll try us again when we next re-open to submissions." 

As they say in the business, anything that isn't a typical rejection letter is a step forward.  If I can finish the novel, maybe I will write a few more short stories and pick up where this one left off.