News News News!

Before I dash off to work (where I spend nearly all my time right now), a few quick updates and previews for this weekend's more extensive update:

1) I am currently working laying out pages of "The Fox and the Shadow."  A preview page will be posted this weekend!

2) Anne, the illustrator of "The Goblin Prince," sent some new character sketches.  They are absolutely fabulous and even better than before, as hard as that is to believe!  They will be posted as we start to finalize the vision.  Also, the manuscript itself is undergoing considerable changes, so it is a bit away from completion.  I'll work on it much more after my classes finish their exams and I submit my graduate school applications.

3) "Reckoning" is in the midst of a complete overhaul.  A new version will be up within the next month.  Thank you for your patience!

Letting Go

Today, around 8 PM, the edges of the sky turned gold, then dark blue, then purple.  Clouds lazed in their grooves while the wind sang a silly song.  Then I, brief repose complete, returned to my class.

It has been two months since my last update.  Much has changed.  Summer is fading and autumn is kissing the leaves.  Parts of my life that I believed unending have ended, and new chapters have begun.  Spring is supposedly the season of renewal, but perhaps there is a chance that buds can bloom before the snows arrive.  Although my progress is uneven, I have been learning to let go.

Happily, one flower, planted months ago, is reaching fullness.  Steph recently sent me the completed illustrations for "The Fox and the Shadow."  As individuals, they are precious.  Each somehow tells a complete story on its own, with colors and shapes wriggling about playfully.  But as a whole, they are far greater.

As you will see once the layout is complete, the images in sequence convey the transformation the Fox endures in the name of vanity.  The Fox is not a terrible being; his pure-hearted friends love and cherish him.  But he is a flawed one, and in the end, his flaw lays him low.  Somehow, Steph touches the Fox's soul and brings it onto the page for all to see and, hopefully, learn from.

One note before bed: Updates will be more frequent now, probably weekly.  As much as I would like to speak with all of you every day, my current work schedule combined with graduate school applications makes it impossible.  However, I will stay in better touch from now on.

I promise.

Mid-July Update

Sorry for the week-long hiatus.  Life creeps up on you sometimes and all you can do is try to deal with what it brings.  Happily, there are many great things on the horizon!

On Monday, my writing group met for the first time.  I presented "The Goblin Prince" and "Across the Ocean" and received fantastic feedback.  For example, in "The Goblin Prince," there is little background on the goblins.  Other aspects of the back-story and world are similarly unexplained due to the word constraints of the standard 32 page picture book.  However, without these explanations, the entire story falls a bit flat.  So it is changing to an older age bracket, loosening word constraints so Hetsi, Agorot, and friends get their due.

I also met with Steph Becker, the illustrator for "The Fox and the Shadow."  We are on track to finish in early August and the new illustrations are wonderful!  They capture the Fox's journey into narcissism and isolation through color and form while still forming a coherent whole.  It is a privilege to work with such a talented artist.  Plus, we came up with an idea for another project, tentatively titled "Rabbits and Robots."  Exciting stuff!

Although it can be difficult to find time for new writing given the demands of editing existing work, rough manuscripts of three new works are nearing completion.  To whet your appetite, here are the titles and short descriptions:

"Across the Ocean": A family in a coastal village face a wrenching decision when there are no longer enough fish to catch.  Two brothers set out on a journey across the ocean to find a better life in a new land.

"Sarah and the Sunken Ship": Sarah, a mermaid, lives happily underwater in a sunken ship.  When she rescues a handsome sailor from a shipwreck, they fall in love.  But when he decides to return to land, she has to decide: Will she follow?  Or is there another solution?  A feminist take on a familiar story.

"Shira and the Tree of Stars": Shira's life is great; she spends her days wandering the forest with her grandparents and her nights learning from her parents.  But one day, her grandmother comes down with a mysterious illness.  Shira learns about the interconnectedness of life and death, and discovers how even those who die live on in our memories and hearts.

So stay tuned!  There is plenty to come!

Sorry but...

my lovely girlfriend, Sharon, is returning from Italy today.  So the update will wait until tomorrow.

In the meantime, here is a wonderful meditation from Jed Perl of The New Republic on Charles Burchfield, fireworks, and the 4th of July.

Searching, Searching, Finding?

I became a writer, in part, because business bores me.  To be more specific, making things is more interesting than selling things in my world.  Thus, having an agent, someone to take care of the business end of creation, is essential.

But it is impossible to find an agent without doing business-y things.  I have a spreadsheet packed with critical details: name of agency, name of agent, submission details, date of submission, manuscript submitted, and the like.  It is eerily similar to the spreadsheets I made during my stint in custom publishing.  I am sending missives off into the void with little hope of hearing an echo in reply.

It is grim work.  I didn't write or edit my projects for a few days.  My typing consisted of Google searches and information copy-pasted into the hated spreadsheet.  I spent hours alone as goblins and vikings fled before the all-important Search.

Today, I stumbled across a few forums of fellow writers.  They too had been firing off queries and manuscripts into the electronic desert, their hopes attached to digital wings.  "How long should I wait without a reply?" one anguished author asked.  Responses poured in.  "Two months!"  "Six weeks!"  "Six months!"  "I waited a year before getting a form rejection."

At first, I thought, how pathetic they are, like a bunch of broken gamblers recounting bad beat stories over cigarettes.  I'll never be like them!

But as I kept reading, my disgust disappeared.  Some of the posters had been around for years, collecting enough rejections to construct a fortress of platitudes.  Yet they kept writing, kept submitting, kept marching forward.  I am only now sending work into the wild, and am already haunted by the specter of future rejection.

They have been rejected only minutes after sending out a query.  They have had agents ask for full manuscripts only to say no after months of silence.  They have had their hearts lifted and broken countless times.  They have gotten drunk in celebration after an agent scheduled a phone call, and gotten drunk after the agent never actually called.

They are not pitiable figures, these erstwhile writers struggling and failing to realize their dreams.  They are heroes, at least in my book.  How many are too afraid of failure to even try?  How many die thinking "I should have told her I love her" or "I should have left my job" or "I should have written that book about nuclear-powered midget robots"?

These writers will die without regrets.  They have felt more than almost anyone else, even if what they have felt is mostly pain.

It is the pain of childbirth.  Of watching your child learn what it means to have a broken heart.  It is the special pain reserved for those who dare to fight for their dreams.

I will write; I will know rejection.  I will probably fail.  But like those courageous idiots on the writer's forums, I will write until they pry the keyboard from my cold, dead hands.

Random Thoughts, July 2, 2010

I'm all over the place today, so today's post is going to be a grab bag.

1) Today's Ghana vs. Uruguay game was heartbreaking.  For those who didn't watch, Ghana and Uruguay were tied 1-1 going into the last minute of stoppage time during the second and final overtime period.  Ghana took a free kick on the right side of the start of the offensive third, and played it into the box.  The ball eluded the goalie, was cleared off the goal line by a Uruguayan player, and fell onto the head of a Ghanian player, who then headed it on net.  The two Uruguayan players on the goal line could not clear it with their heads, feet, or torsos, so they decided to play volleyball; Diego Suarez threw the ball away with his hands.

He got a red card, of course, but Ghana did not receive a goal.  Instead, they received a penalty shot that Gyan promptly missed.  The game went to penalties and Uruguay won, 4-2.

As I said: heartbreaking.  Still, it was great to see the Black Stars show such heart, grit, and determination even in defeat.  Here's hoping that they'll learn from this experience and come back even stronger in four years.

2) It's always surprising to learn the details of people's lives.  Someone I never pegged as an athlete turns out to have played soccer quite a bit when she was younger.  This makes sense now that I know, but I never would have guessed before.  Another friend is taking up piano lessons as an adult.  Since he's an artist with good taste in music, I always assumed he played at least one instrument.  Silly me.

3) Last thought of the day, due to emotional exhaustion from today's games: I need to restring my guitar.  Only one string is broken (the high E) but now nothing sounds right.

Oh, details.

Pictures. Books.

My favorite coffee shop in Israel (sorry Ba'cafe) is The Coffee Mill in Jerusalem.  It has decent food, a great selection of coffee, and a relaxed atmosphere.  The right-hand wall is filled with bins of different coffee beans, imbuing the small building with a warm, earthy scent.  The rest of the walls are covered with old New Yorker covers spanning at least a couple decades.

I spent many days there whiling away the hours with friends, glancing at the wonderful illustrations constantly.  Each captures the mood of a moment in history, from Bill Clinton's mug during the Lewinsky scandal to the iconic New Yorker monocled man.

A recent cover summed up the unfathomable nature of the disaster in the Gulf.  The reference to Escher is brilliant; like his work, the oil spilling into the ocean tricks our minds.  We cannot comprehend it rationally.  Despite my best efforts, I cannot imagine millions of gallons of oil worming their way through deep waters and onto shores hundreds of miles away.  I cannot fully understand the true extent of the damage wrought on the ecosystem.  All I do when I see pictures of birds covered in brown goo is say, "Wow, that sucks."

The cover is brilliant because it is not didactic; it doesn't leap off the page and smack you on the nose for being an oblivious dolt.  Instead, it blends the timeless with the present to remind us of the limits of our mammalian brains.  Our brains are fantastic pattern-recognition machines provided patterns conform to the scale of our humanity.  But there are events in the world that defy our sensibilities, rendering our efforts to shape them mockeries of competence and comprehension.

In a strange way, the illustrations in "The Goblin Prince" and "The Fox and the Shadow" are wonderful because they work similarly and also at cross purposes as that New Yorker cover.  They work similarly because they combine the classic with the contemporary in exciting ways.  Hetsi and Agorot are green-skinned humanoids (like most mythological goblins) but have expressive ears and body language (Anne's idea, a unique feature).  The Fox and his world start brightly colored and cheerful (classic fable material) but slowly darken as the story twists into something decidedly un-childlike.

However, their intention is to take ideas larger than any individual such as the duty of the parent to a child and the relationship of humanity to the natural world, and make them bite-sized.  That is the great gift any great illustrator gives her writer.  Even if you never read a word of either book, you can understand almost everything through the illustrations.  You can know how much Agorot idolizes Hetsi and how Hetsi adores his son.  You can understand the monstrosity of the Fox's actions toward his shadow.  As "The Fox and the Shadow" moves toward completion, the interplay between the words and images invigorate me like a warm summer afternoon scented by freshly ground coffee.

Writing, Rewriting, Rewriting, Rewriting

"Reckoning" is changing, both the planet and the story.  It was overly long at points, short on description at others.  Its new flaws will reveal themselves with revision and re-reading.  They will emerge like knots appears under the carver's hands.

Writing is an immensely enjoyable process.  I put down words and watch stories unfurl.  My problems forgotten, I revel in the joy of creation.  But it impossible to write something worth reading on the first pass.  For every moment spent writing, I spend dozens revising.  That is not an exaggeration.  It took about twenty minutes to write "Adam and the Misshapen Log".  It is now on its twentieth version (I track them, oddly enough) with each full edit taking a few hours or more.

It can be disheartening, this endless process of revision.  Happily, I have quotes from greater writers that promise a payoff in the end.

"I have rewritten- often several times- every word I have ever written.  My pencils outlast their erasers." Vladimir Nabokov

"The difference between the right and the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning and the lightning bug."  Mark Twain

So let me know, dear readers, if I have gotten at least one word right, if I have captured a little lightning in the latest revision and expansion of "Reckoning".  And then, next week, you'll watch the battle continue.

As for when it ends?  Well, I'll leave you with this:

"Books are never finished, they are merely abandoned."  Oscar Wilde

Why Sports Matter

It is easy to criticize sports and athletes.  Many spoiled stars prove that, for all their exploits on the field, they are flawed, sad people off it.  Ticket prices and athletes' salaries soar ever higher while unemployment ravages our economy.  And we, the fans, pay more attention to March Madness than the madness in Darfur.

But for all this, sports do matter.  Sports can be a force for good.  Take Manut Bol.  At one point the tallest basketball player ever, he donated most of his money to help the people of Sudan, his homeland.  He worked tirelessly to raise awareness about the suffering there and to raise money for schools.  He did anything and everything he could for his people.

He participated in Celebrity Boxing on Fox so they would televise the phone number of his charity, the Ring True Foundation (he won in the third round).  Unable to ice-skate, he nonetheless signed a one day contract with the Indianapolis Ice of the Central Hockey League to raise money.  He even worked as a jockey!

Manut Bol died last Saturday from acute kidney failure and complications from Stevens-Johnson syndrome.  At the time of his death, the first of his schools is being built in his childhood village.  His dream was to build 41 schools.  Only 40 to go.

This goal is achievable; as Nicholas Kristof wrote in today's New York Times, "If each admirer chipped in the cost of a ticket to just one game, if each of his former teams agreed to match donations, if a few current and former N.B.A. stars agreed to stand in for Bol at fund-raisers, why then schools would sprout all across Sudan."

I bet it will happen.  And it will all be because of a tall former cattle-herder learned to play basketball.

Just in this week alone, there have been other examples of the power of sports at work.  The U.S. men's national soccer team persevered through two horrendous calls that disallowed goals and won its group, displaying tenacity and resolve at a moment when American leadership often lacks either.  Lightly regarded teams like Japan played inspired soccer while traditional powers like Italy dissolved from cynicism while exiting early.  Time and time again, hardworking teams overcame more talented squads that spent more time sniping at each other than scoring.  Desire and determination beat arrogance and narcissism.

That is why sports matter.  In our athletes and in our athletic events, we see the best and worst of humanity.  For every Italian team that crashes out ignobly, there is an American team that wins brilliantly.  For every Ben Roethlisberger, there is also a Manut Bol.  And if you want to help, head to SudanSunrise.org.  While we cannot all be stars, we can all do our part.

When Do Writers Peak?

The June 14th edition of the New Yorker contains a list of "20 Under 40"; that is, 20 authors under 40 years old handpicked by their editors exemplifying the best the world has to offer.  If you have time, give it a read.  The stories are a mixed lot.  Some are stand-alone works, others are excerpts from larger pieces.  All are worth your attention.

My initial reaction to the stories was jealousy tinged with admiration.  They all write far better than I, and now they bear the New Yorker stamp of approval.  How I wish to have made such a list, to have produced something of such worth!  But time is on my side, for I only recently celebrated my 26th birthday.  Writers take a while to peak.  Right?

Wrong, says Sam Tanehaus of the New York Times.  His article brings up a depressingly large number of authors who wrote their masterpieces while they were under 40:

 "Unsurprisingly, in youth-obsessed America, writers have often done their best work early. Melville was 32 when “Moby-Dick” was published (after the successes of “Typee” and “Omoo”). The writers of the lost generation found their voices when they were very young: Fitz­gerald (28, “The Great Gatsby”), Hemingway (27, “The Sun Also Rises”). Faulkner lagged slightly behind. He had just turned 32 when “The Sound and the Fury” was published. Then again, it was his fourth novel.

The celebrated post-World War II generation was just as precocious. Norman Mailer was only 25 when “The Naked and the Dead,” his classic, and enormous, war novel came out. And James Jones’s even longer work, “From Here to Eternity,” was published when he was 29. The indefatigable warhorses who grew up in the 1950s were also good very young: Joyce Carol Oates (31, “Them,” her fifth novel); Philip Roth (26, “Goodbye Columbus”); John Updike (28, “Rabbit, Run”); Thomas Pynchon (26, “V.”)."

  

I have no illusions of being the next Roth, or Updike, or Pynchon.  Still, one of the reasons I left the music industry is its relentless focus on youth.  I envy my girlfriend her slow development as a fine artist; she is not likely to produce masterworks in her twenties.  Instead, her early years are supposed to be full of struggle as she searches for her voice and vision.  Only later, after mastering her craft, will she produce her greatest work.

Perhaps this is another boneheaded bit of conventional wisdom; perhaps all our flames burn faster than we would prefer.

Still, I am heartened by Tanehaus' following list of writers who found their genius late.

"Joseph Conrad didn’t become a major writer until his 40s (after long years at sea). Katherine Anne Porter was 40 when her first short-story collection was published. Virginia Woolf entered her prime in her 40s. Norman Rush’s first novel wasn’t published until he was in his 50s. Nor is it to say that brilliant young novelists don’t mature into greater ones. Henry James peaked at about 60. Roth reached an extraordinary phase in his 60s. The Bellow of “Herzog” (49) is a greater artist than the Bellow of “The Adventures of Augie March” (38), which itself introduced a wholly new aesthetic to the English-language novel. And the Don DeLillo of “Underworld” (60) far surpasses the DeLillo of “End Zone” (35)."

I would be honored to be part of that list.  Perhaps my late turn to writing prevented me from blossoming into the next Normal Mailer.  But maybe it gifted me with a wealth of experiences to become the next Virginia Woolf.

The turmoil of my late teenage years and early 20s have left me with less prose but more memories than many writers my age.  I have walked in many shoes in many cities around the world.  With diligence, this straw can become gold.  Because, as Tanehaus closes, "Now, as then, the most meaningful 'fight' waged by literary artists is interior. Their principal adversary is not a noisy culture or inattentive readers. It is themselves."

That's a fight I can win, no matter what my age.

Reckoning

"Reckoning" birthed itself, as most worthwhile ideas do.  I had been sitting at my computer all day, taunted by a blank screen and terrible dead-end beginnings.  So, in desperation, I turned to an old exercise from a high school writing class; I re-imagined a childhood memory.  It was easy to find the right one since my writing room is frigid.

The next step was to find out what kind of person would have such a memory.  Sean came into being, and I pitied and admired him from the start.  He is not an exceptional man (except for his outstanding navigational skills) but he is a good man.  Unlike some of the other characters, he does not desire glory or power.  He is not suited for extraordinary times, although those are the times in which he lives.

This week, please enjoy the first section of "Reckoning."  Taste the bite of its dead air; blink back the blinding light of its endless winter.  We won't stay there forever.  Next week, we'll head back in time, to the beginning of The End.

The Goblin King

I am not particularly enamored with corporate holidays like Mother's Day and Father's Day.  I'd like to think that my parents know how much I love them every day, with or without presents, and certainly without horridly unfunny Hallmark cards.

This Father's Day, though, has particular meaning.  A few months ago, I started writing "The Goblin Prince."  The idea appeared in my mind during a bus ride.  It felt true and right, and I almost started crying.  Luckily, I stifled the tears lest my friends discover my insanity and/or menopause.

As a children's book author, much of my time is spent thinking parenthood.  What does it mean to be a parent?  What do we teach our children, and what do we let them discover for themselves?

The title character of "The Goblin Prince" is Agorot.  He, like all children, has wild dreams.  Hetsi, the goblin king, is Agorot's father and rules their subterranean kingdom.  They disagree about the direction in which the goblins should dig.  Hetsi wants them to dig down as they always have, while Agorot wants to see the sky and stars.

Many families find themselves at this crossroads, when the dreams of children and parents diverge.  I know my grandfather wanted my father to follow in his footsteps and become a doctor.  He never let go of this, even on his deathbed, even though my father became a successful attorney.  It is hard for parents to watch their children head down unfamiliar roads, into worlds with unfamiliar dangers.

But as Hetsi realizes, a parent's role is not to tell a child what to dream but to give him the tools to achieve his dreams.

So, on this Father's Day, I would like to thank my father for a rare gift.  Throughout my short but blessed life, his love has carried me toward the sky.  Together, we have tunneled through the long dark to see the stars together.

Thank you, Dad.  I love you.  I will always be your goblin prince, and you my goblin king.

Fanboy! Sneak Peek! Ten Cents!

If you haven't seen the international trailer for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, do yourself a favor.  Click the link, load the video in high definition, turn on your speakers/plug in your headphones, and watch it.

Back?  Pretty sweet, huh?

If you've spent any time around me in the past few weeks, you're probably ready to murder me with a giant hammer, flaming sword, or telekinesis.  My gigantic crush on this movie starring Michael Cera and directed by Edgar Wright ("Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz") borders on obsession.

Ok, so it careens through the border of obsession and ends up barely short of mouth-breathing fanboy cyberstalking.  Deal with it (but please still hang out with me)!

The comic by Bryan Lee O'Malley upon which the movie is based caught my attention with its punchy black and white illustrations, silly dialogue, and complete disconnect from reality.  Sure, it's written by a Canadian but I'll give him honorary American citizenship and maybe build a theme park in his head.  I'd pay to watch this guy's dreams.  Ten bucks says they put any acid trip to shame.

I did find time between my fifteenth and sixteenth viewing of the trailer to think about how much of our identities are caught up in the media we consume.  My younger self was never fully comfortable with his geekdom.  Maybe he thought his soccer teammates would shun him, or his bandmates would mock him.  Neo-Matt (a term I've been using since about five minutes ago) has no clue as to the why.  But I hid my obsession with my Dad's yellowing sci-fi books from everyone outside my family and closest friends.

Something changed as I got older; just yesterday, I told my sublet-roommate about the countless days of my childhood spent in silent communion with those ten cent books.  They are objectively awful, filled with misogyny, colonialism, and horrid, stiff prose.  But instead of being shameful wives locked in the attic, they are eccentric uncles whose stories you ate up as a kid.  And as an adult, you smile during the tellings for different reasons.

Most of those authors couldn't write.  The weakness of their words hampered the power of their vision.  But even at their worst, they conjured desolate worlds orbiting dying suns.  Brokenhearted bounty hunters limping after their last big mark.  Alien geniuses plotting for the thrones of celestial empires and the hearts of eight-breasted princesses.

I am not ashamed to count myself among their fanboys.  No matter how old I become, how withered my body and brittle my bones, I will always dream these impossible dreams.

With this in mind, I proudly present a H&K exclusive sneak peek of my newest short story, "Reckoning."  It follows the last days of Sean, the sole survivor of a failed mission to an icy wasteland and maybe the last human in the universe.  You can find the first few lines under the tab at the top labeled "Reckoning" or by clicking here.  There will be more to follow on Monday.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the sample!

The Why and Where of Writing

When people find out I'm a writer, there are two major questions that always seem to crop up.  They are "Why do you write?" and "Where do you find inspiration?"  While these queries may seem cliche, no artist or writer or musician is going to honestly answer in the same way.  So this seems like a good place to mark the true start of H&K Redux.

I write because I have stories to tell, and telling them brings me joy.  I am not content to only consume the thoughts and dreams of others; the urge to create is too strong.  Even my music, such as the yet unfinished "Ballad of Roger and Rose," tells stories.  There are worlds within worlds inside and outside the universe proper.  Why not explore them?

Like all storytellers, I am an inveterate liar.  My recollection gains embroidery through the years, not because of malice (at least, no longer), but from the sheer joy of weaving a more interesting narrative.  Our memories are the messiest of oral traditions and are wonderful because of, not in spite of, this casual inaccuracy.  In truth, none of us are ever fully the hero, nor others villains.  Yet who is not the hero of their own story?  So I take this human impulse, the telling of tales, and formalize it.

Inspiration for these stories comes from everything.  This not a cop out or deflection; it is the unvarnished truth.  There are characters leaping out of the newspaper, hiding behind shady oaks, and screaming in your basement.  Stories rest in every handshake, car ride, and commercial for weight loss pills.  The writer's art is to distill this chaos into something real, something true, even if that something involves invisible weather gnomes wearing bowler hats.

So, faced by this bounty of inspiration, the question I wish more people would ask is "How do you manage to write day after day?"  Thomas Edison had it right when he said, "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."  The evidence of this small statement's truth is everywhere.  How many talented baseball players fail because they are not willing to sacrifice everything in the pursuit of winning?  How many world-class artists burn out after toiling endlessly in poverty and obscurity?

Writing is no different.  Failure is the neighbor who tap-dances on your ceiling at night and mangles his ukulele at your moment of greatest calm.  Words, sentences, and paragraphs stubbornly refuse to work; they howl and flail like rabid donkeys as you desperately traverse a rope bridge over a bottomless ravine.  And as rejections make not-so small piles on your desk, the tap-dancing grows infinitesimally louder.

The answer is simple albeit a bit recursive.  Writing is the cure to its own suffering.  There are moments in every day when despair seeps into my fingers and my eyes lose focus.  A bit of dialogue limps to a comma and tries to commit hara-kiri.  But before I hurl my keyboard away in disgust, a small voice calls my name.

The goblin prince strides onto the screen and points up.  To the sky, he commands.  We must see the stars!  My eyes sharpen and fingers dance.  Pull yourself together, I tell the dialogue.  There is no time to waste!  There are worlds to discover and never enough moments to explore them!

Hummus and Kimchi Rebooted

It is with great excitement that I welcome you to the new Hummus and Kimchi!  The site has undergone significant changes so please excuse (and let me know about) any problems you encounter.

While H&K started out as a record of my time in Israel, its focus has changed to my fiction writing.  But do not fear!  There will still be posts concerning personal and world events although they will be fewer and farther between.

Here's the upside: H&K will give you access to my thoughts as each piece progresses from idea to draft to final product, along with H&K exclusive short works.  You will find concept art, sample pages, and much more as my various projects proceed.  Writing is a journey through the woods, and I will be happy for the company.

So come; let us wander among these trees together, and see what wonders they hold!