Shayne Silvers

The minions have their first Taekwondo tournament this weekend. Anyone else have their spawn learning the way of the fist?

Strike first.
Strike hard.
No mercy.

Croft asked me if I’d be upset if she broke someone’s arm by accident. I think she’s ready.

(I told her not to do that…of course…)

…

DARKNESS. (To be continued…)

The following is a message I recently sent to a dear reader of mine who was reaching out to check in on me and encourage me to persevere out of the darkness I found myself in the last few years. (Thanks Joe)

I wanted to share it here because I’m going to flesh it out and make a big post about this topic in the near future:

Plato’s Cave bookshop in Nate’s books was a literary metaphor I used for ‘Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.’

If you have Any perspectives or angles you want me to include in my upcoming big post about this, leave a comment and like this post. Be specific and I’ll try to address you.

This is actually a big theme for Reverie but not too much on the nose. You’ll have to read between the lines in the book because I never like to get preachy. I allude to all sorts of inner struggles and battles in my books, replacing ‘you, the reader’ with Nate, Callie, or Sorin. To hopefully give you the armor and tools to battle your demons yourselves. (Horseman of HOPE, get it?)

Anyway, here it is.

Thank you so much for sharing. I can write dark because I’ve got quite a few demons of my own, especially these last few years. It’s kind of masterbatory, but Nate and Callie and Sorin helped get me out of my own dark hole as well. I wrote them back when I was already looking back on an old dark cave of my own, so my mind was already victorious and hindsight can see 20/20.

But when you fall back into a newer darker cave, you have to find inspiration elsewhere bc those ‘whispers’ are crowding out your inner hero’s voice so that what was crystal clear back then is merely dark spooky fog at the moment. All you hear are Sirens (Greek pantheon) and demons when you’re in the s**t. Even when your logical mind knows all the answers and is screaming them at you, you can’t HEAR that voice when you’re in it. So my old stories helped me claw my way back too. Even brought up some tears and enough rage to fight back and drown out those dark voices. Those Devil Whispers

Thoughts?

I hope you guys are ready for some fun new characters and baddies (not those kind of baddies, Larry Diaz Tushman) in Reverie. I’m including some…beings from major pantheons that I’ve never personally seen used very well in supernatural books (although I may have simply missed any authors who did and nailed it).

I tried taking a picture of my murderboard diagram—think Sherlock with the red threads connecting every piece of evidence on a case—but there was simply no way to post it without major spoilers.

I actually use my office window and an excessive amount of dry erase markers so I look like a psycho when I look through the window at the deer. The double window is completely full.

If I had neighbors, they would have already filed complaints for seeing me at 3 am standing in front of the window in my Underdog banana hammock, staring out into the dark abyss of my yard, not knowing I’m just reviewing my dry erase murder board.

Thank you so much for your patience. I know it’s wearing thin but it will all be worth it soon.

This may come off as self aggrandizement—which I would NEVERRRR do…—but I have a request from anyone who has ever read my books, and I have a reason for asking.

After my health scare and big resulting absence, I faced a mental fog of fear and anxiety, which was totally new to me. So I’m really focusing on including some motivational or emotional scenes in my upcoming books. Both happy and sad tearjerkers, but also super inspiring scenes.

Because sometimes during my recent writing, I feel like Kratos in the image below, ready to have Nate burn down the world so I want to balance out some darkness from the next few books.

To that effect, what are some scenes or books of mine that really moved you in some way, or helped you get past some personal struggle?

Can’t wait to hear!

Happy birthday, America!!

Why is it ‘cancelled’ in the U.K. but ‘canceled’ in the U.S.?

Because we gave them that L in 1776.
—Merriam Webster

Still hard at work, guys. Trying to solidify a release date before I post too much. Thanks for your patience. This one’s gonna be…Wylde….