I was doing laundry when I thought it was a good time for an update.
My reverse engineering WIP is coming along nicely. A STUDY IN ORANGE is taking me on a journey through a lurid cityscape of private dicks, hustlers, lounge singers and transgender nightclub owners. I am loving these characters and I can't wait for the world to meet them!
I will be participating later this month in The Second Great Hammer And Amicus Blogathon, hosted by Cinematic Catharsis & Realweegiemidget Reviews. To add a personal overall theme to my part in this upcoming event, I plan to blog about 3 other films that share one specific aspect with my blogathon post!
Also about this blog, I'm considering adding a couple of pages within The JLH Collective that will focus on specific posts. Maybe a page with links to my short stories and one for freakboy on film!
Last, but not least, I am also working on a video or two for The FreakOptic Files, my sorely neglected video blog. One video needs a brief music sting and the other needs a lot more work. Plus, I may have written a potential fourth installment to my Laundry Day series!
We shall half-see what I manage to accomplish and what is relegated to the vaults. Either way, my mind is on a creative spin cycle and it feels good!
Thank you for reading or listening to my half-blind words.
Freak Out,
JLH
P.S. June's Collective Eye is on art, blogs, books, films, music, poetry, short stories, tweets and videos...
I had to say goodbye to Mr. B, the sweetest, roughest ol' tomcat I've ever known. He had been abandoned by his mother many years ago, and he adopted me & my sis. It's a quieter home without him. Then I was confronted by the failure of VISION BENT in finding library readers, which said a lot about how my small Nebraska town views this half-blind freakboy. As insignificant. As a failure. As shit. Yeah, I'm probably projecting my own insecurities onto the population of my town, but small American towns aren't all Andy Griffith and apple pie, if you know what I mean. Oh, and there was also an abundance of Spring snow to bury any good mood threatening to bloom.
Yet, despite the negative vortex, I can honestly say not all of April was shit.
I spent the first Saturday of the month with my Dark Excursions muse and her sister. On the second Saturday, a cousin and I took a much needed road trip. A good deal of fun was had on both Saturdays.
At Penny's Diner in North Platte, NE.
Then, as the month drew to a close, a bit of inspiration blew in my general direction. I jokingly mentioned that my next book would be a coffee table book of orange underwear pics. The idea amused me so much that i snapped a photo of my orange underwear on the kitchen table. Suddenly, a title popped into my head and I set about designing a cover for this ridiculous book.
Once finished, I half-looked upon my visual creation and realized this was potentially more than a fake cover to a cheeky peek into my orange obsession. This was a real cover to a book i had not yet written. The gears in my head began to creak to life, blowing the dust and cobwebs out of my mindscape.
Dropping, um...2020? Maybe?
Hopefully sooner.
I studied the orange and brown cover of A STUDY IN ORANGE, zooming in and out while adjusting my Mad Scientist Glasses. My initial impression was that I captured a 1950's dime store paperback vibe. Then the sharp edges slicing through the cover, fracturing the image, made me think of a crime drama or mystery in a film noir vein. Last but certainly not least, the orange underwear added a lurid romance angle to the mix.
So, writing a lurid mystery-romance is what I've been doing lately and it feels good. The process is reminding me of writing Dark Excursions. As the words spring from my fingertips, I want to get to know these characters better, learn what aspects to their personalities they are hiding from me. I want to inhabit their tantalizing world and explore what's around each corner.
I may have a basic idea of the plot, but my fictional writing process is like a flexible sponge, soaking up and incorporating random elements into the story. I know how the book begins and I have a general idea of the ending, but there's a lot of uncharted territory in between. I enjoy allowing the characters a certain amount of freedom to reveal themselves and potentially alter the plot.
LITTLE KNOWN FACT
I originally didn't intend for Crop to be romantically inclined to Dinkel in Dark Excursions. It wasn't until I wrote Chapter 6 that I realized Crop had feelings beyond friendship for the one-armed gardener. I can't even imagine how different DE would be without that romance at its core.
I hope the cover for A STUDY IN ORANGE, which I think is my best fiction book cover to date, will keep me inspired and motivated. I have a bad habit of losing interest in a project, but I hate the idea of letting the cover go to waste. We shall half-see what happens, and I'll occasionally update you on my progress.
In conclusion, April may have generally been a shit month, but perhaps amazing things can grow from excrement. 💩
Thank you for reading or listening to my half-blind words.
