I'm not sure Lewis Carroll had any idea what was going to happen on the next page as he wrote the Alice books Yay! I can upload images again. The one at left makes me want to read the book. :) You may have noticed that I promised imminent release of the first chapter of The Far Beyond (to my readers group, that is). The reason I haven't done so already is that it's not finished. I have been working on it, but mainly not writing per se. Mostly what I've been up to is fleshing out the story in my head. This is solid practice--I produced The Just Beyond the same way. In my mind, planning is critical. It would be fun to make everything up as you go, and many authors have tried it. I'm not sure Lewis Carroll had any idea what was going to happen on the next page as he wrote the Alice books. :) But as a general rule, you can't craft a great novel without planning. The Just Beyond has several twists and revelations whose impact depends on setting them up earlier. And, of course, the book as a whole sets up the rest of the trilogy. I'm not saying the author should never experience surprise at where the story leads them or add unexpected content that occurs to them midway through. These situations embody the magic of writing. :) But planning the whole thing in outline or chapter form is the most powerful way to make the story coherent and convincing. It took two years to flesh out The Just Beyond before the writing started, and the idea for it first occurred to me about six years before that. Writing The Far Beyond will take much less time--I expect to have it done by the end of this summer. Partly that's because I learned a lot about how to write fast and efficiently in doing the first book, but even more it's because of the planning and note-making I did for it while writing its predecessor. It's all good, it's ALL good. :) - Mark
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It's no different than outlawing hard liquor in an attempt to stop alcoholism and drunk driving, which kill more than twice as many people as guns do every year If you're going to blog every day--and I think you have to if you expect readers to patronize your page faithfully--there are going to be days when you have to stray off topic at least a little in order to write something interesting. People reading your blog presumably would like to know something about you personally, whether they agree with you or not, so I don't view this as a complete abrogation of the blog's purpose. And so, with nothing new on the book(s) since yesterday and since gun control is in the news lately, and my view on it doesn't seem to fall neatly into the mainstream positions being articulated, I'm going to share my thoughts on that.
There is a tie-in to the books, by the way. In The Just Beyond Michael Chandler is assailed or threatened by gun-wielding enemies more than once, he is even handed a weapon to use for good purposes at one point, but it is made clear he personally abhors them and not only can't shoot, but doesn't want to learn. This isn't meant to convey a moral judgment; for one thing, Michael's bacon is saved a couple of times because his allies do use guns, and for another, I don't share Michael's disdain for them. I do however, hold deep respect for his tendency to use finesse instead of force to solve his challenges. The right to bear arms expressed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, at the time it was written, was a countermeasure against the founders' experience with the British government it had broken away from. In Britain then (as largely today), guns were mostly restricted to the constabulary and the military. This reflects the political maxim that citizens only have the rights the government gives them. While in a way that can be interpreted as true of any nation, America was founded on the opposite principle--that the government has only the rights granted to it by the people. The flip side is that the citizenry retains unfettered freedom in all respects not expressly outlawed. It certainly comports with the founders' conviction that as a general matter, the government should never be able to subjugate its population by brute force. Times have changed. Today there is no risk of a British attack or that the U.S. government as a whole will turn on its people. Weaponry has come a long way too. In 1776 and for much of the century that followed, firearms were clumsy, inaccurate, and only capable of a single shot between tedious loadings. Modern small arms can fire dozens or even hundreds of rounds in seconds. What would the founding fathers have done with this scenario? I don't think it would have mattered. The premise that government should be hands-off to the greatest extent practicable is not strained by these developments. Besides, in those days men often carried multple pistols so they could fire in quick succession, and the government didn't outlaw that. CNN's Piers Morgan (not surprisingly a Brit) likes to ask why people need guns, impliying that in the absence of need (as he defines it) the government should prevent their having them. He's hit the nexus of the issue and the key difference between the British and American philosophies. The Constitution does not reserve to the government all powers not expressly conveyed upon the public. It does the reverse. And this is what infuriates me most about gun control: the notion that law-abiding citizens, which include the overwhelming majority of gun owners, should be denied some right--any right--in an attempt to prevent criminals, societal outliers, and the mentally ill from doing bad things. It's no different than outlawing hard liquor in an attempt to stop alcoholism and drunk driving, which kill more than twice as many people as guns do every year. Freedom is not free, and these are unfortunate but unavoidable consequences of a society with individual liberty at its foundation. The current debate came as a direct result of the Newtown school incident, fortified by the Aurora theater massacre, the Oregon mall shooting, and the Gabrielle Giffords assault. It follows that any gun control measure should face this litmus test: would it have prevented these tragedies? I lean toward gun owners' rights, although I could support a ban on the most advanced military weapons and magazine capacities, and I definitely support gun show checks provided a fast, practical electronic system is put in place that doesn't unduly delay the purchase. But let's get real. Congresswoman Giffords and the other victims of that incident were shot with a pistol bought by a mentally ill man whose purchase was possible because he had never been declared mentally incompetent by a judge and so passed a background check. An assault rifle ban would have been irrelevant and the background check was ineffective. Ideally a check with accurate results would have prevented the sale, but where was accurate information about his mental state supposed to come from? He had never been medically diagnosed nor clashed with law enforcement. How could any background check, even a more robust one, have turned this up? The suspect in the Aurora movie theater was also mentally ill, had stolen the weapons, and used a pistol, a shotgun, and an assault rifle, only the last of which might have been banned by current proposals. No amount of background checking can prevent weapons from being obtained by theft, nor would proposed magazine limits have reduced the carnage. Unlike a pistol or rifle, a short range shotgun blast creates a wide area of damage like a hand grenade, so an assault weapon ban wouldn't have worked; every point in the theater was within effective shotgun reach, and he could have carried two of them if denied his AR-15. The Oregon mall shooter also had stolen his weapon, and left no indications of why before killing himself except having seemed detached and listless during the week before. It's not clear whether he was mentally ill, but he clearly was in some kind of altered mental state and over a month later, following an intensive investigation, the police have found no motive. What in any of the proposals is supposed to be able to prevent this? Paradoxically, the Newtown attack, whose horror was the specific trigger that unleashed the debate, is the definitive demonstration of the ineffectiveness of the most commonly proposed gun control measures. He stole his weapons; he was mentally ill; the owner of the guns he used had passed a background check; in addition to an assault rifle he had two pistols with numerous backup clips, which by themselves could have killed every victim slain without reloading or by reloading with smaller clips between the principal's office and the classroom; and the school had extraordinary, robust visitor entry measures in place which the shooter easily overcame. Which of the current gun control proposals would have unwound this attack? What strikes me most about the discussion is that while it's universally acknowledged that the perpetrators in each of these cases was mentally ill--only the Oregon mall case being a possible stretch in this regard--yet the solutions they offer are targeted at sane, clear-thinking and law-abiding citizens. Stop right there! Banning military slaughter gear and requiring gun show checks sounds great, it feels like doing something about the problem, but IT HAS NO EFFECT AT ALL ON THE BRAIN DISEASE THAT ACTUALLY CAUSED THESE MASS MURDERS. THE PROBLEM IS MENTAL ILLNESS. These measures wouldn't have prevented these killings. In the Newtown case, a raft of similarly serious measures FAILED. So are the proponents serious about addressing the issue, or are they just using these tragedies--perhaps unconsciously--as an opportunity to promote a slightly oblique agenda? And another thing, as they say :) --the supposed tie-in to electronic games is utterly, infuriatingly bogus and I will debunk it in tomorrow's post. Stay tuned! - Mark All along I've wanted the freedom to go a bit I'm having a lot of fun right now plotting out the details of The Far Beyond, the second book in the trilogy. The overarching story is all planned out, of course; I have the climactic scene of the third book so scripted in my mind that when I think about it, it plays in front of me like a movie... a big, bad, over-the-top effects movie like a cross between Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. :) I have the big scene in The Far Beyond laid out too, but a fair bit of how we get there remains open--and that's a good thing. Until the writing started, I have to admit I was a little afraid that The Far Beyond might be a disappointment to some readers. It probably will be the shortest volume of the trilogy, but even so, I was afraid the content might be a little thin. For one thing, while The Just Beyond rides along on grand science and philosophical themes and Beyond All Else is going to be a full blast cosmic spectacle, The Far Beyond's story is highly personal. Michael isn't out to save the world or figure out why the universe seems to be going crazy around him--he's just looking for his brother. He'll have plenty of surprises, and the TFB narrative is critical to what happens in the last book, but it's very focused and at first, I thought, ran the risk of feeling a little subdued. No more. What's come to me in the past couple of weeks is an outline that steals some of the thunder from Beyond All Else to make the second book more adventurous and complelling. And that's really exciting for me, because my greatest joy in these last two books is the opportunity to paint on a blank canvas. All along I've wanted the freedom to go a bit Alice-In-Wonderland, and now, instead of putting that off to Book Three, I've found a way to get to it sooner. Book One of course was largely set in the mortal realm, and while plenty of wild stuff goes on it all had to be reconciled with what readers know and perceive about the tangible world. In the second and third books I get to make up whatever I want--the only limitation is that it be consistent with what was revealed about the Afterlife in The Just Beyond. As it turns out, that only scratched the surface... and now the second book is going to present much more of the Afterlife's underbelly and its context in the divine battle than I originally thought. I can hardly wait to get into it. :) Which I'd better go do. The new PC is mostly set up now and I'd really like to finish writing TFB sometime this summer. It's not a stretch, the book will definitely be shorter than the first one (for one thing the publisher thinks the TJB manuscript was too long) and I learned a lot over the course of last year about how to write fast and efficiently. I also want to have some substance to post about and publicize to build an audience for the second book once the first one is published and (hopefully) people beyond just my family and friends are reading and getting excited about it. The one thing I'm not sure about is how much of the plot to reveal. My small readers group is going to get the whole thing, of course, receiving each chapter as it comes out for comment and critique, but I don't dare reveal the whole thing or even any plot spoilers on the Internet. I'll figure it out, though. I've found this novel-writing thing is teeming with unexpected delights to discover along the way, and it's best just to smile and let them happen. :) - Mark James was right. It belonged in a prologue; every other option was worse. I dislike prologues. I don't read them. My rationale is that prologues are a symptom of lazy or inefficient writing. Prologues mainly provide background for the main story--but it's the main story, not the background, that made me buy the book. Whatever is in the prologue, my thinking goes, should have been in the main story if it was all that important. If it's not, it shouldn't be in the book at all. And so I invariably skip prologues, starting my read at Chapter 1 with blithe confidence that I'm not missing anything I need to see. So how did a prologue worm its way into The Just Beyond? From the mouths of babes. My son James and I were lucky enough to visit Hawaii last spring. It was a refreshing, exhilerating "just the boys" trip and his first to the islands. I was chipping away at the science fiction segment of the book at the time, the middle chapters where Michael learns an amazing secret from his physics professor friend Dan. My son was reading the manuscript on his laptop and let me know, in no uncertain terms, that the profile of Michael's relationship with Vicki was too low key. I needed to rachet it up, he said, and early on in the story. As early as possible. It should be established, he declared, in a prologue. I dismissed his suggestion and articulated the view I've recounted above. James was unmoved. Prologues are exactly for this, he insisted. There are too many flashbacks in the book already. More importantly, the relationship with Vicki was vital. It couldn't wait to be "worked in." I had to lead with it. And if I wasn't willing to compromise the first chapter--which I wasn't, because I considered the kickoff with the apparition in the apartment to be a critical hook--a prologue was the only alternative. I told him no, I told him I had other plans, I told him he couldn't really know what would and wouldn't work from reading only a third of the story. Still, his adamance nagged me. I had recently come to a similar conclusion about Vicki--I realized her profile so far was too low, that the relationship and her death were key elements deserving of prominence. I had indeed planned to "work it in" later in the book--where exactly I hadn't decided, but it would come to me. I'd worry about it when I'd hit the part of the book that called out "it's time." I felt I was getting to that point, and so I gave it some thought. And the more I thought, the less satisfied I became with my options. My son was right, there already was more than enough flashback in the novel--another technique I disdain in principle--and I was hesitant to flesh out Vicki that way. I didn't want to interrupt the story to do it, either--things were moving along at a clip, with the road section over and the story kicking into action gear. Where to put the Vicki background to do the least harm? What to sacrifice? And in the end--after two weeks of soul-searching, the Hawaii trip and the immediacy of his advice in the past--I slowly but resolutely settled on the answer. James was right. It belonged in a prologue; every other option was worse. And as I started writing, gripped with determination to make sure mine wasn't one of those prologues, the kind I detest... the inspiration consumed me. What lay on the page when I was done was some of what I consider the best writing in the entire book. It doesn't invalidate my general view of the device. For one thing, my objection to prologues isn't absolute; I hate them in direct proportion to their length, and will even read a prologue that runs only a page or two. Mine went less than three pages, close enough to make me comfortable. And I did my best to charge it with vivid emotional imagery delivering critical information. I wound up content enough to include it in the "partials" (a limited number of pages or chapters requested by a publisher in order to determine whether they want to see the whole manuscript) without thinking my chances of sale would be injured by planting these few lines in front of my blockbuster first page. It would be comforting to say I learned something from this, but I'm not that mature. :) It didn't obliterate my objection to prologues in general and it didn't convince me--though it probably should have--that I need to listen to others more, even those young enough to be my son. :) At least I had the sense to come around to a great idea that wasn't mine. The book is much better for it. Thank you, James. :) - Mark Inquiring minds want to know. Lazy writers won't tell you. What generated the basic premise in The Just Beyond? Frustration. There has been plenty of fiction about the Afterlife, but it tends to sort into three categories. The first, let's make up a term, is "gothic immortality." These are the vampire and similar works of Anne Rice, Twilight, Underworld, Being Human, and so on. They're hugely popular and definitely entertaining, but they don't really define an Afterlife per se. What they define is states of eternal life, whch is not the same thing. And while they often include a tremendous amount of history and march to a consistent set of "rules", they typically do not elucidate what I consider the most important question: why. Not how they came to be what and where they are; that is universally covered. What's missing is an overarching explanation of why they should exist at all. The second category is what let's call "Earthlike." A prime example is the movie Defending Your Life, where Albert Brooks goes on trial in an environment indistinguishable from the mortal world and winds up running after a bus bound for Heaven, which itself drives into that same kind of mist as described below. The typical proposition is that the Afterlife only seems grounded in the familiar because the characters aren't able or ready to grasp its reality. They're seeing a metaphor they can understand and not the true environment. That I could almost buy, but what is the reality? Inquiring minds want to know. Lazy writers won't tell you. Last and most prevalent is the "fog of death", a.k.a cheating. :) The Afterlife is barely shown if at all. This lets the writer off the hook from depicting a complex Afterworld or explaning why it is as it is. Dead characters disappear into mist, fade out, or simply vanish, giving little or no glimpse of what lies beyond. Daniel Radcliffe does this in the last Harry Potter movie and his later The Woman In Black. (By the way, watch the 1989 original of that movie if you want to experience the prickliest feeling you've ever had at the back of your neck .) There are at least two reasons for this. First, to define the Afterlife in rich and specific detail, writers run the almost guaranteed risk of alienating or offending potential readers who consider their own vision of life after death to be inviolate. Second, working out the details of a selt-consistent Afterlife is hard. What exactly is required to get in? Do people sleep, eat, or have sex? If so, why? What other things do they do? Eternity is a very long time. How long would you be content to do nothing but flit about in the clouds on angel wings visiting departed family and friends - a year? 10 years? 100? A million? A billion? How long would it take to pursue your every aspiration, and once you're finished, what would you do then? These questions are left begging in most Afterlife fiction, but they can be answered. It just takes courage: the willingness to develop a coherent image and then bear the bitter assault of a multitude of offended detractors. Richard Matheson's What Dreams May Come gives a complete, consistent, and rational explanation (as will the Beyond Trilogy by the end; the first book has only cracked open the topic), and I respect it immensely. None of its critics, when you weigh them objectively, have a vision as logical or robust. The Afterlife in The Just Beyond overlaps some of Matheson's picture, though not so much that originality is lost. I wish there were more like it. I don't believe that Matheson's concept or mine literally reflect reality, but they might. Isn't it a good thing to have such possibilites afloat in the marketplace of ideas? - Mark I was dazed and listless for two days after I wrote the airplane escape scene "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader." When I first ran across this gem of advice, a lightbulb went on. I had never thought of it before. But it's sooo true. If the author isn't as genuinely engaged with the characters and story as he expects the reader to be, the falsity will show. How dare we expect readers to swoon over a book the author views with detachment? Moreover, we mustn't forget that publishers and agents are readers too, and they're even more likely to spot and reject a book on the basis of insincerity. That quote gave me license to write not just a technically sound novel, but an emotionally personal one. And I did. It's partly because many of the book's vignettes are based on events in my real life, but even more because I so took the protagonist to heart. I'm not equating myself with Michael Chandler--I could never do many of the things he does--but I related to him deeply. Michael is like the uber-me, the person I would want to be in an ideal world. My "tears in the writer" were literal. I was dazed and listless for two days after I wrote the airplane escape scene. I was so choked up I couldn't even write. After a couple of days though I realized that the cure was not to suspend writing, but to continue. I had to get Michael to a better Place. Even now, four months after completion, I still cry when I read certain parts. Of course, I cry at the dance scene in the movie Napoleon Dynamite, so maybe that's not saying much. But at least it's heartfelt and real. And there have been tears in the readers, too. Several participants in my readers group as the book was being written told me they cried over certain parts. Nothing relating to the book has thrilled me as much as that. My greatest hope for The Just Beyond is that it will engage, uplift, and inspire people. The proof will come in the comments readers make when it's released, but I'm gratified with the above indications that I have lived up to that standard. :) - Mark I woke up this morning to two wonderful, completely unexpected surprises. Yes, a "surprise" is by definition unexpected, but these were two baubles of happenstance whose possibility had never even entered my mind. First was the realization that during the night, my computer had spontaneously rebooted. Let me explain. For the past four weeks I have left my PC running without a break. This has more to do with the publication of The Just Beyond than anything else. Since early last summer my machine has been dropping indications of impending death; I won't go into details but after a good deal of investigation and diagnosis, the conclusion I eventually reached was that the motherboard was limping along to persuade me to replace it before it expired. The problem manifested itself most often as freezing on reboot, and when the latest in my series of amateurish workarounds crashed in early December, I finally got the message. I got in touch with a local mom-and-pop computer business, the best of only a handful in Brookings, and put a new custom-built rig on order. (That machine is supposed to be done this week--was supposed to be delivered yesterday, in fact, but delay and slippage in service level seems to be endemic here and we've learned to live with it. When we first moved in our gas fireplace, the only source of heat in the house, would not come on. It took four technician visits over six months to get it fixed, leaving us without the device till the end of winter. We bought plug-in space heaters to get by and installed a Mitsubishi heat pump, which now serves admirably both for heat and precious air conditioning in the spring and summer. So on balance it was probably a good thing.) :) Leaving the PC on eventually created a serious dilemma. I do consulting work, and one of the critical applications for that glitched and locked me out. The only solution was to reboot, which I dared not do for fear it wouldn't restart at all. The work app was important, but what I really couldn't risk was missing an email from the publisher or losing my book documents. I backed up the manuscript, of course, but after dedicating a year's worth of time, travail, and emotion thanklessly grinding it out, you get nervous. :) This morning my PC desktop looked odd--recent icons out of place and a message saying the network drive connection had failed. These were clear signs that the rig had rebooted on its own sometime during the night. Hopefully, I tried to open the locked application--and it worked! This is a huge pressure lifted as the lack of access was bound to cause me real problems very soon. That was a great relief, but an even more significant boon also occurred. I woke up with a searing passion to write the sequel, The Far Beyond. Yes, it was already underway, but in fits and starts. There was much content I hadn't resolved in my head, and I had written and then discarded a number of openings. I couldn't seem to establish a visceral connection to the book. My muse was hiding. She's back with a vengeance. I woke up feeling fiercely invested in the story and the characters. You have to write it, my soul seemed to say. You can't leave them (the characters) dangling. The clouds parted and I could see clearly how I should proceed. So off I go! Is there a message here? Probably not, but if there is one, it would be to never give in to despair. Serendipity happens--more often in real life than in fiction, which is saying something. Expect the best, or at least don't resolve yourself to the notion that it's impossble. I believe your mental state has a lot to do with success or failure--both positive and negative perspectives can produce a corresponding self-fulfilling prophesy. From here on, mine will be positive for The Far Beyond. And it's guaranteed to make the book better. - Mark If I had given three months of exclusivity to every publisher I approached with The Just Beyond, it would have taken 12 years. Everyone has asked themselves this question at one time or another. Here's what I learned in writing The Just Beyond. Some writers relish the experience of writing in itself, and these people have a leg up on getting published. If you write largely for the pleasure, you're not likely to abandon a book half done or to stop writing in the face of rejection. If you're in that rarefied category, you can stop reading this now. I wish I had that kind of constitution. I don't. I fall in with the majority of prospective authors who would relate to the statement: "I hate writing, but I love having written." This post is aimed at them. The most important thing is stamina. It's fun to plan out a prospective book (if you even do that) and the writing is a kick at first. After a couple of chapters however (if you even get that far), you'll inevitably hit a wall of writer's block, loss of interest, or fatigue. If you can't plow through that, not just once but repeatedly over the long haul, it would be better not to have started. This is far and away the most common cause of project abandonment. Most people just can't sustain the gruelling focus for as long as it takes to finish. Second, you need something distinctive to say--a compelling, well thought out, and original idea. Don't just assume you have one--do your research. Look into books already out there in your genre and be prepared to articulate how yours is, if not better, at least distinctive. Publishers want to know why people would buy your book if it's already been done. At one point while writing The Just Beyond I was mortified to realize it had a good deal in common with Richard Matheson's iconic What Dreams May Come. I had only seen the movie--one of my favorites--and in desperation I got my hands on the book itself to determine exactly how and to what extent mine might seem derivative. Upon inspection I was able to establish, to my own satisfaction at least, that the overlap was low grade. The type of story was completely different, my vision of the Afterlife wasn't as similar as I had feared, and the climax and overall impact of the two books were miles apart. The strongest tie was a general validation of love and the human spirit, and that fell well short of neutralizing The Just Beyond's originality. Finally, you need commitment. Writing reigns supreme among the arts in terms of deferred gratification. It takes six months to a year to write a standard length novel, and that's just the beginning of the process. Seeking an agent or publisher is a molasses-slow drudgery. Most agents want nothing to do with new writers, and publishers typically take several months to a year to get to your query letter. It's much worse if you respect some publishers' prohibition against simultaneous submissions (sending your proposal to several publishers at the same time). I don't--I think it's paranoid, unrealistic, and ridiculously unfair. Do they really expect us to wait out their sluggish review processes one at a time? If I had given three months of exclusivity to every publisher I approached with The Just Beyond, it would have taken 12 years. Yet even with simultaneous submissions, working to sell a book is thankless, soul-wounding tedium. Unless you happen to win the manuscript lottery--you're more likely to be struck by lightning while riding a unicycle on the back of a unicorn--you will get rejections. Lots of them. I wrote my first novel years ago, a science fiction story called The Judges of Beta Librae, and after six rejections I abandoned it out of discouragement. As a result I'll never know whether it might have sold had I been properly tenacious. If you remain unfazed by all of the above, the answer to the question is...YES. By all means, get started on that book today! I wish you every success, and if you're able to overcome all of these daunting obstacles, you deserve it. - Mark shameless marketing just comes with the territory It goes against my grain to be doing all this rabid promotion of The Just Beyond. I'm sure a lot of people are sick of seeing it, especially with the book not even out yet. It pains me even more to know how narcissistic it makes me look.
Yet it has to be done. I think most artists would rather just work their craft and leave marketing to someone else--or no one else. But like all arts, the publishing world is ferociously competitive. It's hard for a new writer to establish a toehold even if their book gets published. So if you want to develop into an author who can make a living from book sales alone, you have do everything possible to cultivate a presence. It's not just smart and necessary business--the publishers demand it. I was a bit surprised to find that all publishers who requested the full manuscript in response to my query letter required a marketing plan as part of the package. But that's where the industry is today. I've been hoping, planning, and working all my life to see if I could establish a creative career. This means a lot to me--really, it's the only lifelong asipiration I haven't yet fulfilled. So I'm heavily invested in the success of this book. And shameless marketing just comes with the territory. Utlimately, it's about walking my own talk. I've always told my kids to judge themselves not by what others say but by their own efforts. The true measure of a person is not what they actually accomplish--which inevitably involves an element of luck--but what they do with the circumstances that are within their control. Even the story of Michael Chandler can be viewed as an illustration (albeit hyperbolic) of this point. And so I promote. Blog, blog, blog, FB post, FB post, email, Tweet, repeat. Because in the end, whether The Just Beyond sinks or swims, I need to be able to look myself in the mirror and know I gave it my best shot. That if the novel fails, it's not because I didn't do my part. It's sometimes hard to take comfort in that alone--but in a practical sense, it's all you can do. I don't always live up to my own expectations...but I never stop trying. - Mark The Just Beyond was planned all along as the first volume of a trilogy. With the first book set to be published soon, work on the second is underway. A dedicated page for Book Two, The Far Beyond, has been added to this site. Check it out for a larger version of the cover art and updates about the manuscript's progress. |
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