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Shane Kroetsch

Dark and Introspective Fiction

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pandemic

Things You Do When You Can’t Leave the House, and Why Beta Readers Are So Important.

May 30, 2020 by Shane 1 Comment

Where did the last two months go?

I suppose for many it was spent being anxious and confused. Figuring out how to fill your day when you can’t leave the house. Deciding what is acceptable and what isn’t when you do. Wondering how we maintain connections when it’s not okay to hug someone you love. Trying to maintain some semblance of mental health in a world that is full of things to be afraid of.

Because I’m lucky enough to still have a job, I’ve spent a lot of my time working. In between, making sure the kids are keeping up with their online schooling and aren’t going crazy because they haven’t seen their friends in person since March. I’ve also spent a lot of time trying to look through the haze of an uncertain future to figure out what the new normal will look like. How much PPE will I have to wrap myself in to go to a concert? Will going out to my favourite restaurant still be a relaxing and enjoyable experience? How do I sell books about a pandemic, when we’re all living in one?

That time spent looking forward hasn’t been productive. I wrapped myself up in the what-ifs, the fear, and the business of writing was set aside.

Setting aside the things that feed your soul is never a good thing. It leaves pace for unhealthy distraction. At least it does for me.

Things started in a positive enough direction. I organized my office, built a new storage unit that I’m excited about, and I put together a shelf for all things spoopy.

Then bikes happened. I helped a friend find a new bike because they wanted to get back into riding. I finished up a 3-speed conversion on my wife’s bike too.

Next I started planning improvements to my 1942 CCM Rambler, and my Raleigh DL-1.

Then I found a beach cruiser frame for cheap on one of the three buy & sell groups I check every fifteen minutes or so. I justified the purchase by planning to build it up using the pile of parts in the shed. That day I came home with the frame, but also a parts bike to help complete it, and another bike meant to be a parts bike for the Rambler.

Because there isn’t much I won’t do for my people, I started finding and fixing bikes for other friends. I’m sure you can see where this is going. There is nothing but bikes. I currently have eleven of them in the garage.

The amount of time I was allocating to planning the builds alone was excessive. I overwhelmed myself in an overwhelming time. So, last week I smartened up and made the decision to set them all aside. Not forever, but for now. My goal is to finish up the three friend projects this weekend and get rid of two or three others as-is. Then, all going well, I can get back to the business of writing.

Trust me, I’ve got a lot of writing to do. I had big plans to publish three books this year. Even outside of a pandemic, the enormity of this has recently sunk in. It’s not just the amount of work, it’s that I want to put out the best work I can for where I’m at in my writing journey. This is where my gratitude for, and honest belief in beta readers comes from.

In case you’re not familiar with the term, a beta reader is someone who reads your finished manuscript for feedback. In April, I sent out Surviving for that purpose. Much of what I got back was very positive. A few very important issues were raised though. Once said out loud, the concerns that have been in the back of my mind for months and years were now made clear. I saw the holes. I saw where it was lacking. And so, for the second time in about a year, I’m blowing it up. Two key characters are changing. I’ve found ways to speed up the action, to introduce new conflict, and bring some interesting things forward to the third installment, Chasing the Storm.

I have a lot of work to do, and at least in the beginning, I was excited about it. The problem is, regardless of chosen distractions, life will always put obstacles in our path. Pandemics, jobs, and family obligations. All I can do is set my intention, narrow my focus, and get to it.

Filed Under: Blog Post Tagged With: bikes, focus, pandemic, writing

Pandemics, Real and Imagined

March 25, 2020 by Shane Leave a Comment

Image via @mcpheeceo

Any rational human being should be able to look at their life and say,

“You know what, that thing scares me a little, I think I’ll stay away from it.”

Apparently, I’m not rational. I’m also terrible at taking my own advice, choosing to run toward my fears instead of away from them.

I don’t know when or where zombies became such a problem for me. It’s like one day, poof, the mere thought of them keeps me up at night. I’ve never been one to watch them on TV, movies, or read about them in books, with one notable exception, that being World War Z. Oh wait, there’s the Resident Evil movies too. Anyway, like I was saying…

In this instance, I took it one step further. I didn’t just indulge; I wrote a damn book about them. On top of that, they’re not just zombies, they’re pathogen zombies, so it’s like a pandemic. My timing is either perfect, or it’s crap. I guess we’re about to find out. For one, I’m hoping people are looking for something to read in between searching the land for toilet paper.

I’m pretty sure this story has been told before, but let’s take it from the top. Near the end of 2014, as far as my shitty memory can recall, a storm hit the east coast of Canada and the US that threaten to ruin a lot of people’s day. Flights were cancelled and in New York, a curfew set in place. Because I’m the paranoid type, I immediately began to ponder what it might be covering up. The real storm was a bit of a dud. The storm that started to build in my mind, at least to me, was something much more interesting.

Unfortunately, it got a bit messy from there. I started the story, then set it aside. I picked it up for Nanowrimo the year after, then set it aside again. My intention was to publish it along with a collection of short stories before the end of 2017. It turned out that the storm story wasn’t nearly ready, and self-publishing was a little more involved than I thought, so I focused on the collection. That was published a year ago February, and you would think that would give me all sorts of time to get the novel done. Like I mentioned in the beginning, here is where life took some turns on me that I hadn’t anticipated.

A job that I wasn’t super fond of started making me miserable, but I got packaged off. Hooray, right? I decided to drag my best friend onto the creative freight train. Hooray again! So many good ideas! Then life gave me the middle finger and whole new challenges stood in my way. Somewhere in the mess, I decided to make the original Storm novel book two of a three-part series, and I wrote what is now known as Into the Storm.

Into came fairly quick. I tend to focus on how shitty human beings are and explore that in my work, but it’s dark in ways that I haven’t written about before. I was pretty impressed with the first draft but going back to it after a couple of weeks I saw that it needed a lot of work. I believe the words I used were, “this is garbage.” So, I did what is becoming my process, I moved things around by millimetres until I was happy enough with it to push it out into the world. That time is now. Here’s a fun little teaser that we put together for it.

But wait, there’s more. Book two, Surviving the Storm, will be released in three months. Book three, Chasing the Storm, will arrive two months after that. Seems a little crazy, right? Welcome to being me. I will readily admit that it’s a lot to deal with, but I’ve been given a chance to take a shot, and I’m going to take it.

Regardless of everything else going on, I’m proud of the final product. I’m proud that the vision Kaleigh and I have been working on is finally bearing fruit. All going well, this is just the beginning.

Not that I want to dwell on it, but the world is a scary and confusing place right now. If you’re isolating, or just need to get away from things for a bit, I know of a good ebook or two you should check out…

Into the Storm

This and That but Mostly the Other

Until next time, stay safe and well.

Filed Under: Blog Post Tagged With: books, new book day, pandemic, writing, zombies

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