John A. Underwood

50k on the WIP

Yesterday, I passed the 50,000 word mark in my standalone cyberpunk novel work-in-progress. 50k always feels like the most significant milestone in the drafting process, for some reason. I’m not sure why. In my head, if not necessarily in physical reality, 30k is 100 pages; 60k is a novel, although not a particularly robust one.Continue reading “50k on the WIP”

Considering Novellas

I’m generally not great with short stories. My mind wants to make things too complex to be constrained to 8,000 words or less. Novels take time, though.

Getting Into an Expensive New Hobby

There’s the joke about men turning 35 and having to pick between becoming obsessed with Civil War history or smoking meats. Growing up in the American South afforded sufficient opportunity to visit Civil War museums and battlefields ad nauseum, and I work in the food service industry. So those are out. But, as I willContinue reading “Getting Into an Expensive New Hobby”

2023

Once again, we find ourselves in that special place of thinking maybe this year will be different, maybe this year will be better. I despise this manner of thinking, though I still fall prey to it somewhat. A rounded rock covered with water and air corkscrews through endless night like spiraling down a toilet’s drain,Continue reading “2023”

Soundtrack

I write to music, always. I must have Noise. For a number of years, I’ve leaned toward instrumental music. Anything from classical (with a preference for the baroque) to drum and bass, so long as there isn’t a voice human or synthetic worming its way through my earholes and into my precious thought jelly withContinue reading “Soundtrack”

Random Access

“The dead man had something I need. Five hundred’s what I owed him, so five hundred’s what you get.”
“Five hundred for a retrieval job? What’s the catch?”
“If you’ll just get in the car, I can fill you in on the way.”
“Mama said never to get in cars with strange men.”
“You’ve known me over a year.”
“And yet, you remain strange.”