Tom Vick Guide

Happy Valentine’s Day. I hope you’re reading something that inspires love in your life. Maybe a good book is all we need this morning and a slice of heaven and sip of decadence and…I’ll let you finish the rest.

Welcome to my writing world! My name is Thomas Vick, a debut author currently seeking representation for my Urban Romantasy Novel, An Unveiling of Ice and Sift.

Elves come to the Human District to feel mortal.
Some of them don’t make it back.

When a designer drug called Deathbringer strips elves of their immortality, highborn thrill-seekers flood the city below, chasing pain, pleasure, and consequences they’ve never had to face. Soon, their bodies start turning up in the streets.

Emery Nyrawnia knows exactly why.

A former Watch operative and once an ice-wielding immortal, Emery helped test the drug before disappearing into the shadows. Now she runs covert operations against corrupt elvish elites—until the murders drag her back into a war she thought she’d left behind.

To finish the fight, Emery makes the one choice no immortal should: she gives up her magic, her immortality, and the mental armor that kept her alive.

Mortal. Hunted. Exposed.

As power structures collapse and class violence ignites, Emery must decide whether breaking an unjust system is worth becoming collateral damage.

An Unveiling of Ice and Sift is a dark urban fantasy about addiction, power, and the cost of choosing humanity.

As soon as I finish Addie LaRue, these will be my next enjoyment reads. Already loving Murakami. Why am I reading these? I’m planning a trip to Tokyo this summer!

Little late but always welcome. It’s how I feel about books I never go to when they just came out. When I never got a chance to hit the wave of obsession. Now they’re like buried gems, unearthed to be looked at and marveled alone. Without all the pressure to finish so it won’t be spoiled.

I bought the lie.

I thought I needed to make the most money, be sales rep of the year and drive the sports car to be happy when really my inner child starved, begging me everyday to give him a blank page.

I always told him no. Not until this happens or that happens.

He wanted to play with my kids, and I told him you’re too tired. I’m too tired. So a ghost was there watching it all unfold.

Now I am a stay at home dad, tackling this idea of being a best seller, and not just a dad who shows up but goes the mile for his family.

Don’t buy the lie. Find your inner child. Listen to them. Heal them. And let them play.

We ban what we can’t control. 🎛️

We don’t want empathy so we ban in it.
We don’t want educated empowered citizens so we hide the keys to financial and career success.
We don’t want the abuse to be known so we pay the victims off.

Banned books teach us that we can alchemize our fear into courage, our grief into empathy, our abuse into a voice. So go read banned book this week. Before more are removed.

What a whirlwind of a week! 10 more agents added to my wishlist, a refocus of my social media, and new writing strategies to go back into my WIP with passion.

For my new followers! Hi! I’m Tom! If you’re following me the first time, I’m bringing you content on all things writing, books and a little second hand wisdom. This month and next I’m focused on creating content around the need for men to find stories that they can relate with. And it’s not going to be normal broic non fiction stuff that usually browse. I’m talking about the need for us to find characters who show us another side to masculinity. The side that is longing to connect deeply with people and their own inner family.

So comment, like, repost and let’s spread the word about how men can find empathy through the literary world!

You want a country without empathy? Where the chill girl is the new cool girl, doesn't speak up when their guy friends make racist (bigoted jokes)? Keep the trends the same and we are headed straight for it.
If you look at the problem, closely, its men who were taught that emotion is weakness, that its the c***k in your armor, that stoicism is your default mode, and if you break that cool well you need to buck up.
That's what almost every male written book teaches. Sober up and solider on. It's in the past.

But what happens when our spiritually bypassed pasts come back to haunt us? We lean into the trend that it's okay to get angry, make the side comments, put empathy in a cage and let it rot.

When really, the key to unlocking male empathy is teaching them what spiritual/emotional bypassing is, what it leads to, and how true emotional sobriety isn't gritting your teeth and turning away, its opening up and sitting through the flow of emotions.

To finally deal with the past. That you were abandoned, that they didn't have room for your inner turmoil. That they taught you to be violent because its in your nature when your real nature is to be a shepherd. To protect. To guide. To nurture.

That's why I write. To draw my brothers in. To help them deal with what was said and done. To have a story where they can see themselves in. Not the 80's gunslinger. But the dad looking for love. The man looking for belonging. The man who is deprived of beauty and adventure because they gotta keep that s**t together and make the money. You're meant to live for so much more.

Men don’t need more lectures from thought leaders.
They need more stories.

Reading literally develops the network in our brain to read emotions in others and understand them.

But sadly, the publishing industry has made its gamble on books that paint us as the villain, as the 80’s action star, or the drunk deadbeat. When there’s few books showing us finding our compassion, wrestling with addiction and loneliness or fixing relationships instead of leaving them.

It only keeps the tale that sells selling until someone breaks though with a different message.

This is why I write, so that guys can find their inner family, their empathy, wrestle with their feelings not bad guys. Maybe if we had more stories about that we’d have less stories about gun violence. I’m also writing so that everyone can heal their inner family. Any story that doesn’t do that, I can find it in myself to write it.