Hey there, and Happy New Year!

I always like the week between Christmas and New Year's. It's a pleasant "dead zone": halfway on vacation (my kids are home, and that means slacking off to do stuff with them) and halfway working (because I love what I do and don't like to be away from it for long).

Writing-wise, I've been playing with a brand new book over the past half-and-half week. Or, rather: an existing new book.

If you're a die-hard, you might remember that earlier this year, I tried to live-write a story called The Ephemera but couldn't make it work. When I bailed on it, I figured The Ephemera was dead. The idea, however, refused to leave me. It was about the subjective and (wait for it) ephemeral nature of memory, and how our unique personal memories help create our reality. It came with an interesting corollary: Because everyone's memories are different, we're all living in slightly different realities.

I wanted to revisit The Ephemera as my first project of 2025, but it needed to be completely different than it was before. I figured I'd use some of the same characters and concepts, but I'd have to throw away the original themes and original approach.

The story needed a clean slate, in other words, if it was to work this time.

When I re-started The Ephemera, I stopped focusing on the story so much (I only need a seed to get started, not a fleshed-out plot) and focused instead on MOOD. As I told you a few emails ago, the mood for this one became desolate, liminal, unanchored, and unreal. But I couldn't just SAY those moods; I had to FEEL them. If I was going to write a desolate and liminal book, I needed to get myself into a desolate and liminal state of mind.

To get there, I chose some images that reminded me of how I wanted the book to feel and made them my writing wallpaper so I'd be looking at them all the time. Like this:

The visuals helped, but I also needed music to help set the mood. For some reason -- maybe those images of an abandoned amusement park (inside Chernobyl's exclusion zone, BTW), or maybe some gestalt vibe -- it felt like a John Carpenter soundtrack to me. Ever seen a John Carpenter movie, especially from the 80s or 90s? The slow synth vibe of movies like Halloween, Christine, The Thing, Prince of Darkness, or even Escape From New York has its own unique energy that seemed perfect.

To listen to every day while writing, I ended up choosing the soundtrack to They Live. After listening to it for a while, the whole They Live vibe started to feel more and more right to me, so I watched the movie again too ... and then again and again ... to deepen the mood.

If you haven't seen They Live, it's wonderfully absurd. Like most John Carpenter movies, it manages to be awesome and low-brow at the same time. The alien-face special effects are particularly terrible. But on the plus side, it's got "Rowdy" Roddy Piper in it, and it's got this:

Setting the tongue-in-cheek aside, there's actually a lot about They Live that made it feel like a cousin to what I'm writing. I'd have to spoil things to tell you why, but we'll just say that the inspiration is real.

Next week, my pleasant dead week will be over and I'll be back full-speed to my usual work. I've got so much cool stuff planned for you in 2025, so be sure to stick around!

Happy New Year!
JT

P.S: City of Fire -- sequel to Gore Point -- is coming to the usual booksellers in a few weeks, for those of you who didn't get it during its Kickstarter campaign. ALSO, in a few months, I'll be releasing the final book in the Gore Point trilogy via its own Kickstarter!

P.P.S: Speaking of Kickstarter, I haven't forgotten about the anniversary special edition Fat Vampire campaign, which you can follow here. I've got great plans for that one, and it'll be out this year.