Tag: Pro Wrestling

The Writing Life, 5 October 2024: Still hoping for fall

We are officially into the start of autumn since the equinox happened, but despite a cruel tease of such weather, we here in eastern Iowa have not been getting consistent fall weather. I am going to insist on decorating my blogs with autumn imagery until it actually looks and feels like these pictures in the outside. That’s just the way it has to be for a while, folks.

But we’ve got writing and new events to talk about, so let’s get into it.

The Home Front

The transition between old residence and new residence for Laura (my wife) and myself continues.

Painting in our home had been completed, and the removal of our carpet is all but done. We also did some trimming up on the tree in our front yard that was a bit overdue. Now will come the process of treating the hardwood floors, moving all the items now in storage into the storage of our new house, installing new lighting and ceiling fans, and carting away some of the resulting detritus. Soon enough, our modest apartment will have to be packed up and ready for shipping, either by us or the movers.

Thankfully, unlike our last move, this is a move within our current city and will not need to be finished immediately. I am somewhat selfishly looking forward to my new writing space and how I will eventually get it set up.

Of course, not even this move will be the end of moving and changes for us. My son is moving closer to buying his own home, and we will be happy to provide any assistance for his own move in Des Moines. Thankfully, he does not have as much possessions as we do and his is also a move within a city.

What I’m Writing

I’ve been quite busy this week and last with my ongoing projects.

  • The Yank Striker 2, the sequel for The Yank Striker: I am now at 52,000 words for the first draft of the book. I am currently shooting for 75,000 words as a new target for the end of the year. If I average about 250 words on it for the remainder of the year, I should be able to get to 75,000 by 31 December 2024.
    At this point, I think it is doable. I will concentrate on this for my short-term goal, and then work toward getting it publication-ready for summer 2025.
  • The Untitled Pro Wrestling Family Drama project: Made a big jump in progress on this project. As of this writing, I’m beginning to wrap up the critical scene where my main character makes the fateful decision to look into his family’s history of professional wrestling although he has been at least on a surface level avoiding this world for all his life. I’m going to write just what I consider to be the essential scenes until I get to something approaching a full rough draft. This will be interesting because the story will eventually bounce between the late 2010’s and 1954-1974. It’s the first time I’ve dealt with different time periods in one of my stories, and I’m looking forward to the challenge.
  • The Untitled Liegois Poetry Chapbook: I have actually made more progress on this project this week. I’ve finished revisions on the poems, and finished arranging them in order in the chapbook. Again, I think my revisions have significantly tightened up those poems and given them more impact.I am not sure when I will have this ready for sale when I’m out and about, so to speak. I have to add in some author’s notes and acknowledgements, consider whether some more photos might be called for, and some other design issues. Plus, I have to start figuring out how to print the thing. However, I’m inching closer to being a self-published poet.

What I’m Doing Having to Do With Writing

(AKA personal appearances)

I (also sometimes known as The Dude In Purple) still have a few events coming up for this fall and some others I’m tentatively adding to the schedule. All these events will be me appearing live and with my books, The Holy Fool and The Yank Striker.

Here are my current events1:

  • I’m headed back to the Des Moines area from 12-6 p.m. Sunday, 6 October [THAT’S TOMORROW], for the Windsor Heights Book Fair. This will take place at the Agora Events Center, 7692 Hickman Road, Des Moines. This will be the second year I’ll have participated in this event, and I’m eager to return.
  • I’ll be participating in the Local Writers’ Book Fair, which will be part of the 2024 Iowa City Book Festival. It will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 20, at MERGE, 136 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City. This is again my second year of participating, and I am looking forward to being back in Iowa City.
  • I’m planning to attend the Fort Madison Area Art Association’s Meet the Author Book Signing event from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, November 30, at the FMAAA’s center at 825 Avenue G, Fort Madison. This would be my first author’s event in my new home of Fort Madison, and I am overjoyed to be part of this gathering.
  • I’m hoping to be part of the DSM Book Festival at the at Franklin Junior High Event Center, 4801 Franklin Ave., Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, 22 March 2025. This is being sponsored by one of my favorite independent book stores in Des Moines, Beaverdale Books. I’ll provide more information, hopefully, as the event approaches.

    I’ll be looking to add some more dates on the appearance calendar as time goes on. Hope to see you at one of those places.

Writing Quote of the Week:

I agree with Eudora’s words here, although I’m more certain of the sentiments.

Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.

  • Eudora Welty, On Writing

A Few Links About My Books and Where to Find Them

(Feel free to ignore this bit if you’ve read it before)

Currently, I have the mighty total of TWO novels which make up my official backlist2.

My first book is a journalism thriller set in Chicago during the turbulent days of the 2008 election and the start of the Great Recession. Check out more about it here.

You can get the paperback version of this book on Amazon here and the ebook version of it here.

A fellow Iowa writer and organizer of the Windsor Heights Book Fair, Tyler Granger, recently did a review of my book: you can find it here3.

My second book, the first in the The Yank Striker series, is a soccer drama telling the story of the beginning of a young American’s career as a player. There’s more about it here.

The paperback version of this book can be found on Amazon and the site of my publisher, Biblio Publishing. It is also available in ebook format on Amazon here.

John Buzbee of The Culture Buzz radio show in Des Moines (KFMG FM) interviewed me about the Yank Striker: You can catch it here.

For full links to these and other helpful places having to do with me and my writing, you can go to this page on my WordPress site, Liegois Media.

You can also get my books in person at these fine Iowa bookstores:

  • NEW: Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St, Burlington.
  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave. # S1, Des Moines
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.
  • The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.

I’m always looking for some new places to place my books, so feel free to hit me up in the comments if you have a suggestion.

Final Thoughts

All the writers keep writing and everyone keep safe, especially those who are continuing to deal with the effects of Hurricane Helene passing through the southeastern US over the past week. Best wishes.

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  1. All promotional images courtesy of their respective organizations. ↩︎
  2. Don’t worry, I won’t include this bit in the next regular newsletter in two weeks to give you a break, lol 👍🏻. ↩︎
  3. If anyone does any reviews of my work, I’d love to post some links to them. Send it to me in the DM’s or comments. ↩︎

The Writing Life, 21 September 2024: Hoping for fall

We are getting deeper into fall in Iowa, but sadly not yet not deep into proper autumn weather. It is more like the weather at the beginning of a school year where you walk to school wearing a proper fall coat in the morning and yet it gets so hot by mid-afternoon you’re forced to walk home with the coat tied around your waist. Such is life in Iowa, but at least it’s not Kansas, which is flatter, doesn’t have as many good rivers as Iowa, and is at least ten degrees hotter1.

The Home Front

Not much here in recent weeks.

It’s part of a slow process, but we are starting to get things sorted out with our new home in Fort Madison. Most of it involves removing carpet, which both my wife and I always thought seemed strange to put over perfectly good hardwood floors, and cleaning things up.

Once the move gets done, we’ll be hopeful not to move again anytime soon. Seems like the past few years has been a constant move for both my wife and I and now our kids, who are in their own apartments or in the process of hunting for their own homes. Besides, Fort Madison is a nice little river town to get settled in.

I am hoping beyond hope this Friday will be the very last 80-degree-plus day in the state of Iowa for 2024. The stinking heat we have to deal with every afternoon after I get out of work can’t go away soon enough. Bring on actual fall weather and even winter at this point.

What I’m Writing

Time for an update on what I’m writing.

  • The Yank Striker 22, the sequel for The Yank Striker: I am now at the 50,000-word mark for the first draft of the book, which is a bit amazing thinking back to how blocked I was on the project in late spring and early summer of this year. I’ve got around nine chapters I’m thinking about adding onto the story, but not all of those are going to be of any considerable length. There’s at least 5,000 of the words in my first draft I know are going onto the discard pile whenever I start revisions. 80,000 words is going to be my absolute limit on the word count for the first draft, and I would prefer to have a final draft of somewhere around 70,000 words, especially since this will be a series and I’ve got a lot more story to tell down the road.
    With the regular progress I’ve been making on the first draft over the course of last month, I’m now feeling quietly confident I might have the first draft wrapped up by the end of the year. That’s going to require considerable focus on my part. From some back of the envelope calculations I just made this week, if I manage to get maybe 300 words on the project written every day, I should have my first draft done and ready to revise by the end of 2024.
    I would love to try and produce a book every year if possible. Getting a book done in two years (as The Yank Striker 2 looks to be at this point) is still the fastest I’ve ever written anything up to this point. If I’m writing this much, I want to be producing books and releasing them. The larger backlist I have, the better in my opinion, and I want to have whatever time I have left to write and produce as much as I can. Also since I am actively working on one series (and have a second in mind), I don’t have the feeling I am going to run out of things to write anytime soon.
  • The Untitled Pro Wrestling Family Drama project: I’ve had some time to work on this project last week, not so much this week. I’m getting close to the point in a typical story, if you are using a Hero’s Journey or a Steal the Cat-type outline, where the main character gets a challenge to go on a quest or a challenge.

[MINOR SPOILER ALERT:3]

I decided the impetus for such a call to action was a mini-family reunion in the scenic location of northeastern Minnesota, and it involves a glance into a family past my main character has avoided for years. But when he gets a glimpse of his past from an entirely unexpected source, that past comes rushing back, prompting him to find out the truth about it.
Pro wrestling is also involved.

[END OF SPOILERS]

The Untitled Liegois Poetry Chapbook: Not much work on this one this week. I think I’ve sorted out which poems I want in the book and have taken a shot at revising them. I’m quite satisfied with the results of the revisions, making what I’ve created more compact, more impactful.
Whether I get them done or not in time for some of my more recent outings is a totally different story, but it still seems closer to being done than it was when I was just talking about the idea a year or so ago.

What I’m Doing Having to Do With Writing

(AKA where I might be appearing soon, among other things)

I (also sometimes known as The Dude In Purple) still have a few events coming up for this fall and some others I’m tentatively adding to the schedule. All these events will be me appearing live and with my books, The Holy Fool and The Yank Striker.

Here are my current events4:

  • I’m headed back to the Des Moines area from 12-6 p.m. Sunday, 6 October, for the Windsor Heights Book Fair. This will take place at the Agora Events Center, 7692 Hickman Road, Des Moines. This will be the second year I’ll have participated in this event, and I’m eager to return.
  • I’ll be participating in the Local Writers’ Book Fair, which will be part of the 2024 Iowa City Book Festival. It will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 20, at MERGE, 136 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City. This is again my second year of participating, and I am looking forward to being back in Iowa City.
  • I’m tentatively planning to attend the Fort Madison Area Art Association’s Meet the Author Book Signing event from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, November 30, at the FMAAA’s center at 825 Avenue G, Fort Madison. This would be my first author’s event in my new home of Fort Madison, and I am overjoyed to be part of this gathering.
  • I’m hoping to be part of the DSM Book Festival at the at Franklin Junior High Event Center, 4801 Franklin Ave., Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, 22 March 2025. This is being sponsored by one of my favorite independent book stores in Des Moines, Beaverdale Books. I’ll provide more information, hopefully, as the event approaches.

    I’ll be looking to add some more dates on the appearance calendar as time goes on. Hope to see you at one of those places.

Writing Quote of the Week:

Good words from the King about one important requirement for a writer.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

  • Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

A Few Links About My Books and Where to Find Them

(Feel free to ignore this bit if you’ve read it before)

Currently, I have the mighty total of TWO novels which make up my official backlist.

My first book is a journalism thriller set in Chicago during the turbulent days of the 2008 election and the start of the Great Recession. Check out more about it here.

You can get the paperback version of this book on Amazon here and the ebook version of it here.

A fellow Iowa writer and organizer of the Windsor Heights Book Fair, Tyler Granger, recently did a review of my book: you can find it here5.

My second book, the first in the The Yank Striker series, is a soccer drama telling the story of the beginning of a young American’s career as a player. There’s more about it here.

The paperback version of this book can be found on Amazon and the site of my publisher, Biblio Publishing. It is also available in ebook format on Amazon here.

John Buzbee of The Culture Buzz radio show in Des Moines (KFMG FM) interviewed me about the Yank Striker: You can catch it here.

For full links to these and other helpful places having to do with me and my writing, you can go to this page on my WordPress site, Liegois Media.

You can also get my books in person at these fine Iowa bookstores:

  • NEW: Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St, Burlington.
  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave. # S1, Des Moines
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.
  • The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.

I’m always looking for some new places to place my books, so feel free to hit me up in the comments if you have a suggestion.

Final Thoughts

That’s about it for now. All the writers keep writing and everyone keep safe.

-30-

  1. I do not mean to insult any Kansas residents or those who like living there. It’s just my taste to live somewhere near a big river and have it be relatively cool for most of the year if I can help it. ↩︎
  2. All of the following titles are working titles. I’m going to wait to release what I think should be the real titles when these projects are closer to publication. ↩︎
  3. Then again, isn’t this the point of this whole newsletter in part, to let you know what I’m working on? ↩︎
  4. All promotional images courtesy of their respective organizations. ↩︎
  5. If anyone does any reviews of my work, I’d love to post some links to them. Send it to me in the DM’s or comments. ↩︎

A Week in the Writing Life, 21 October 2023: Slow writing… but still progress?A Week in the Writing Life, 21 October 2023:

We’re deep into October, or as I like to call it, one of only two months out of the year Iowa has near perfect weather. How about we talk writing and other stuff?

What I’ve Been Writing

I’m very deep into putting together The Yank Striker 2 (working title), and that’s been pretty much all I’ve been writing this week other than this site. I feel like I’ve been making good progress on the big section I’ve been on and I’m in the process of finalizing what the bare bones structure of the book should be.

I’ve probably mentioned it before in this space, but my way of planning out the plot of my books is to string together what I call essential scenes. These are the scenes I absolutely have to have in the book to tell the story I want. Usually, I take a look at these scenes or notes on these scenes throughout the writing process and ask myself “are all of these scenes absolutely necessary?” As I am often writing these scenes not in chronological order, but in order of importance, this doesn’t result necessarily in me cutting scenes after I write them1.

It also helps streamline the revision process, for sure. I still remember having to cut down my first 150,000-word rough draft of The Holy Fool down to under 100,000, and it was a tough lift. When I used this process for The Yank Striker, it really cut down on the extraneous scenes and material in my work.

One of the paradoxes I’m running into, however, is this: the more I concentrate on the project, the slower the writing is coming for me. I continue to write on a daily basis, but my word count is not as high as it has been in previous days when I was writing more than just a couple projects.

In discussing the situation with my Des Moines writing group (the Iowa Writers’ Corner), they brought up the idea I have to spend time putting greater thought into how the story is going to go and proceed. Just because the words are not filling the paper or electronic page doesn’t mean I’m not participating in the writing process.

I would have to agree with this, now I’ve had a chance to consider this idea. It’s like I know all of the battles that are to come in a military campaign, but I haven’t exactly worked out how those battles are going to be fought. I’ve always worked on improving my word count to ensure I remain a productive writer and not just sitting around and claiming to be a writer. However, I need to keep in mind word count is not the only measure of productivity.

What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing

I’m in the middle of reading projects for at least three people currently. Two of these I’m planning on doing book reviews for, and the other will be beta reader feedback.

Even being a fast reader like myself, this can be a long process even not taking the time of writing the reviews into account. However, I don’t want to let these projects sit on the back burners for too long.

As for the book reviews, I’m planning on posting those on Goodreads. My profile page is here for those curious, but I will also post those reviews here for you to read as well. I’m looking forward to you hearing about those projects, so stay tuned in a week or so.

Writing Advice for the Week

This week, it’s time to talk about the fifth of George Orwell’s six rules of writing. Orwell, the author of 1984 and Animal Farm, is a longtime idol for me. During the past several weeks, I’ve been reviewing this well-known set of rules he laid down in an essay called “Politics and the English Language.” The entire essay is worth a read.

So, number five on the list is:

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Orwell did title his essay “Politics and the English Language,” but this can obviously be applied to whatever language you happen to be writing in2. Since you have to assume in most circumstances you are writing for a general audience, why use words you have to take time to explain to them? Especially if using such a term isn’t necessary for the task at hand, whether fiction or nonfiction.

As always, there are exceptions to this rule. One example I recently faced in a short story I posted to the site was when I used the term “kayfabe.” Unless you happen to be a professional wrestling fan, you are likely not familiar with this term. However, I used it in the story because I wanted to take time to explain the concept to the audience through a conversation my main character had. I wanted to do this so the audience understood the term and had an appreciation for how important the concept was in pro wrestling. As with Orwell’s and all writing rules, there are always exceptions.

Writing Quote(s) of the Week

Unlike George R.R. Martin, I’d have to say I’m more of an architect. In my opinion, the best writing techniques are whatever ones get results.

I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they’re going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there’s going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don’t know how many branches it’s going to have, they find out as it grows. And I’m much more a gardener than an architect.

George R.R. Martin

Where I’ll Be and Where You Can Find my Books

Currently, I have one book event on my calendar. From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, I will be at the Elwell Building at the Iowa State Fairgrounds as part of the 8th Annual Indie Author Book Expo. If something else comes up, I’ll let you know.

I’ve got links to my books in paperback and ebook format in the sidebar here, but you can get them in person at these fine Iowa bookstores:

  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave # S1, Des Moines
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella
  • The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.

All three are great independent bookstores who deserve your support.

Final Thoughts

Well, I’m spending the rest of the day with my wife watching the Iowa Hawkeyes play football. Hope the week to come goes well for you all.

– 30 –

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The Birth of a Wrestling Story: A quick look behind the curtain and into my creative (booking?) process

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A Week in the Writing Life, 15 July 2023: New stuff cooking

I’ve been writing a bit this past week, and a lot of it unexpected. We’ll get into it.

Home Front Stuff

Not too much at all to report here. I’ll be on the road with my wife to a wedding this weekend, so that’s a rare trip for us. She’s asked me to promise not to discuss soccer the entire trip up. Since the USMNT just lost to Panama this week, I think I can keep my pledge.

What I’ve Been Writing

With trying to keep up on the blog, getting things ready for the weekend (because I’ll be on the road for at least part of it), I haven’t had much time to get back to work on The Yank Striker 2. I have the feeling I will have to start not worrying about the boring scenes while writing the exciting ones, and that should help me get the story done faster than it has been.

Meanwhile, I’m cooking something else up, fiction-wise.

If you recall last week, I mentioned that while I have been trekking around different places in Iowa promoting my work, I got the idea for a possible book series centered around professional wrestling. Not only have I been sketching out some notes regarding this (yet to be officially named) series, but I’ve also started writing what could be a short prologue or short story set in the world this takes place in.

I started to get really in-depth with describing how this project came about and a few tiny hints about its plot for the newsletter today. However, the description began to get a bit oversized for just one subject.

So, since I wanted to talk up the project anyway, I decided to break off the whole discussion about it and the creative process I went through into a separate post. It’ll post here at noon tomorrow (Sunday) and will be a free read for everyone. I hope everyone enjoys it.

What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing

I just wanted to thank the Slowdown Coffee Co. for being my host last Sunday as part of the Northside Market festival there in the Highland Park district of Des Moines. It was a great experience, a great coffee shop, and I would absolutely love to go back sometime.

I’ll be at the monthly meeting of the Iowa Writers’ Corner today. If you’re a writer who’s interested in being part of a writing community and learning from other writers, definitely come on down. We meet every third Saturday of the month at Felix and Oscars (F&O’s) at 4050 Merle Hay Road in Des Moines starting at 9 a.m. You can check us out on Facebook.

Oh, and there’s a tiny event I’d love to see you at.

I’ll be having my first “Meet the Author” event at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 26, at Beaverdale Books, one of three Iowa bookstores where you can find The Yank Striker in stock. We’ll talk about the book and series, as well as writing in general.

Also, that same day I’ll be having my first ever radio interview with John Busbee and his show The Culture Buzz on KMFG 98.9. The interview should air the day of the event during his regular slot (11 a.m. – 1 p.m.). Heady stuff, for sure.

What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations

My inbox has been filling up with good stuff from Substack, but I’m going for a change of pace this week. I grew up with a guy at Muscatine High School named Juan Fourneau. While working in my hometown, he spent 20-plus years as a professional wrestler on the independent circuit. He’s written a memoir about those experiences and a whole mess of other subjects as well. I think he has a good eye for detail and description, among other things.

We were both recently featured in a new collection entitled Roads We’ve Taken: A Writer’s on the Avenue Anthology. He has a great essay in there about how watching the movie Rocky 4 inspired him as a kid, but you should also check out his web site (and his other writings) at https://www.latinthunder1.com/.

Writing Advice for This Week

In the piece I’m going to be running tomorrow about my new project, I talk about those who do a considerable amount of planning for their fiction projects and those who are “pantsers” (another word for flying by the seat of their pants). I come down more on the side of the former group than the latter, although I have seen the benefits of just writing whatever comes to mind and seeing where it takes you.

However, if you are writing anything bigger than, say a novella (which the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Association says should be around 17,500 and 40,000 words), I believe some amount of world-building is going to be required.

To elaborate, exactly what type of organization you choose to use for your project should be up to you. Whenever I’ve taught writing at the high school or junior college level, I’ve always considered this to be part of the prewriting portion of the writing process. I try to expose my students to a variety of prewriting techniques, but the choice of which ones they use to create material I leave in their hands. “Use whatever works for you,” is a frequent instruction of mine.

For example, with this new project I’ll talk about tomorrow, I had an idea of using either a timeline (a list of events in chronological order) covering the events of the story or a family tree (which shows the relationships between a family’s members). In this case, I settled on the family tree, since the entire plot was centered around one particular family. I sketched out the family tree using Microsoft OneNote (which I think I need to review at some point on the blog) where I laid out the family members, their names, and nicknames. I also added the dates of their births and (if applicable) their deaths, and the dates of their marriages. I eventually ended up adding more than 20 characters to the list, so it was a prewriting activity that paid off for me.

There’s times when I feel awkward when I’m giving writing advice. I believe the reason is because when it comes to the craft of writing, there are more general, broad principles to how it works rather than a long checklist of rules1.

For example, it made sense for me to make a family tree for the new project because the main character had a sizable family which were the main participants in the story line. However, in another story where there is a smaller family or a main character’s family is not as sizable, such a tree might not make sense. In fact, if my story involves a large number of events, a number of events that coincide with real-life events (as in historical fiction), or a long time period, a timeline may be a better way of sketching out where your story is going.

Thanks for coming to the lecture, everyone. Let me know if there are other writing issues you’d like to discuss in the comments.

Writing Quote of the Week

Since I eventually want to write a fantasy series, I thought a Brandon Sanderson quote might be good for this week. I also find it applies to my own philosophy toward my work as well.

By now, it is probably very late at night, and you have stayed up to read this book when you should have gone to sleep. If this is the case, then I commend you for falling into my trap. It is a writer’s greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of his books. It goes back to authors being terrible people who delight in the suffering of others. Plus, we get a kickback from the caffeine industry…

Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Final Thoughts

And that’s another week in the books. Make sure to check out my Substack at noon Central time tomorrow for my extra post on my newest project – and it’ll be free, too.

As always, check the links in the sidebar and on my author page if you’re looking to buy one of my books. If you buy one, I’d absolutely love it if you could leave a review on Amazon or wherever you get it, because that would be very helpful.

– 30 –

While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

Subscribe to my Substack here.
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Footnotes:

  1. This idea of general writing principles might be worthy of its own post later on. I’ll keep it in mind. ↩︎

A Week in the Writing Life, 8 July 2023

Well, this might be a bit of a rush to get out my newsletter, but I have been very busy during the past week. And there has been plenty of new ideas popping into my head over the past couple of weeks.

[EDIT: And of course this takes a lot longer than I expected, so it’s coming out in the afternoon rather than right at noon. Not that this is a hard deadline, but I would like to have a consistent posting schedule. I will say I’ve been much better about consistently posting than I have been for years past.]

Home Front Stuff

There’s not too much to report on here. I’ve been basically chilling out at home most of the week and enjoying some much needed rain. Laura and I had a nice quiet Fourth of July at home, and I joined her in one of her favorite traditions – watching the Fourth of July celebrations in Washington, D.C. It was a good time for us.

I will say today we have the windows open in our house for the first time in several weeks. It finally got cool enough and a good enough breeze to make that tolerable, which is a rare occasion in Iowa during the summer months. We’ll likely have to close up the house by tomorrow, but I’ll enjoy things while I can.

What I’ve Been Writing

Well, for one thing, I’ve been writing a lot recently.

All kidding aside, I’ve also been doing a bit of creating as well. “Wait, isn’t any sort of writing creative?” Yes, this is true, but I’ve been creating some new stuff.

First, let’s get onto the (slightly) older stuff. The rough draft of The Yank Striker 2 remains under construction, and some of the workers were on the job site this week. On this subject, I have to say undertaking a side quest has had some benefits toward the project moving forward. A few weeks ago, I went slightly insane and decided to write a whole history of the English soccer club at the heart of The Yank Striker series.

It turned out all right as a piece of writing, but the short story (for lack of a better word) wound up being a valuable resource for putting together the new book. As I mentioned earlier, I now have a fuller understanding of the setting of my series even after writing a book set in that world. It made me aware of characters and situations I was not even aware of, and they added so much texture to the story. I’ve been busy this last week on adding new scenes or revising old scenes using some of the information and characters I discovered throughout creating the history. It’s been exciting.

Also, I’ve come up with a new idea for a series1.

I still have an idea for a fantasy series I’ve been toying with for at least the past couple of years, and it’s still something I want to do. However, over the weekend I was back around my hometown in Muscatine where I did a couple of quick appearances, including one at the book fair at the David R. Collins Writers’ Conference.

It involves not exactly a sport, but something that could be considered an art form and a storytelling medium, involving physical activity and movement. That art form? Professional wrestling.

Photo by Patrick Case on Pexels.com

I want to discuss how this series came about in a separate post, but what I will say is the idea for this story, a multi-generational tale set in the world of professional wrestling, has grown faster than the xenomorphs in the Alien series, it appears. I’m already hearing full conversations in my head, ideas of greater themes and surprising connections to writing. And there’s an actual Iowa component to this series, which is a bit amazing considering I’m writing it2.

I had to chuckle a bit as I continued to consider this subject matter. I started paying attention to wrestling as a fan in the mid-1980’s, just as the WWE hosted its first Wrestlemania shows and the NWA was still active in some of the (slowly dying) territories. My parents were by no means fans of my fandom, and I remember several conversations with my father about the whole silliness of the situation and my obsession tough men and their psychodramas. I was pleasantly surprised when my father did not immediately discount my idea, but you need to realize this is a man willing to drive halfway across Iowa to meet with me at a book fair and have lunch one day, so I’ve always considered him to be a very supportive parent.

I’m not sure they will read this new series, but then again, my mother, bless her, is nervous about reading my fiction because she doesn’t want to be critical of it. On the other hand, my daughter Madeline is fearful of few things and certainly not of taking the piss out of her pops, so she might read some of it. My son Jacob, who also follows wrestling off and on, might give it a look, as well.

Don’t worry, there will be more on this soon.

What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing

I’ve got two events coming up, so I’ll just mention them quickly.

Tomorrow, the Highland Park Historic Business District in Des Moines is hosting the Northside Market from 12-6 p.m. There’s going to be a whole bunch of great local vendors out there and Sixth Street from Euclid to Douglas will be shut down for the event. I’ll be there at the Slowdown Coffee Co., 3613 Sixth Ave., Des Moines, with my books, including The Yank Striker. We can talk writing, soccer, or just about anything, to be honest. I’ll be there for most of the afternoon.

On the last week of this month, I’m truly honored to have my first “Meet the Author” event at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 26, at Beaverdale Books (which happens to be celebrating its 17th anniversary today). Beaverdale is also one of three Iowa bookstores where you can find The Yank Striker in stock. I’m really excited for the event and to talk about this book and the series.

If there is any chance you can come out here and join me at this event, I would absolutely appreciate it. Anyone who wants a copy of my books will be able to get them, autographed, at $10 each – about a 30 percent discount.

Also, that same day, it appears I’ll be having my first ever radio interview with John Busbee and his show The Culture Buzz on KMFG 98.9. If all goes according to plan, the interview should air the day of the event during his regular slot (11 a.m. – 1 p.m.). I’m truly looking forward to it.

What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations

I’ve been finding a lot of good articles on Substack Notes and “restacking” them, so to speak, so keep checking out my feed for some cool reads.

What I’ll briefly mention here is this great article by Write More with Simon K Jones covering different classifications of serialized fiction in the Western World from approximately the 19th century onward. It’s a great read. Made me think about which of these formats best meets my interests at the moment.

Writing Quote of the Week

This was actually one of the better analogies I’ve ever heard on the subject.

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.

Lorrie Moore

Final Thoughts

Okay, that’s it for now3. Hey, if you’re interested in purchasing any of my books, all you need to do is click on the links on the sidebar, or you’ll also find those links on my bio page as well. See you here next week.

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Footnotes

  1. This was the idea in last week’s newsletter I promised I would have a separate story on this idea. I still want to do one, but this might have to wait for a bit. I might be able to put something together later today or on Sunday, but as of right now, it is a work in progress, as is the idea for the series in question.
  2. I am probably one of the most hopeless Iowa writers out there because Iowa has not been a major setting in my books up to this point. My first book, The Holy Fool, was based almost entirely in Chicago. The only connection to Iowa was as the birthplace of my main character, Samuel “Sonny” Turner. The Yank Striker has no Iowa connection whatsoever. A good amount of the poetry I’ve written in recent years has been based in Iowa, especially along the Mississippi River.
  3. I figured out how to do linkable footnotes in WordPress this week! Very cool.