Slow love coming... Fiona Apple's "When The Pawn..."

There are music albums that I have in my ever expanding collection that over the course of years, or even decades, do not grow on me. I can’t help it, it’s usually music by some great artist, all the critics love him or her, but it’s not going on rotation in my personal playlists and when I encounter a single random song during jogging or in the car, I press “Skip.”

Fiona Apple’s sophomore album “When the pawn…” was such an album. I had bought it when it came out in 1999 on CD, sold the CD later, kept the MP3s in my iTunes collection, added the album after I started out with Apple Music a few years back. And yet, I think most songs on the album remained unplayed and un-starred over all those twenty-one years. Fiona’s debut album shone over everything, never to be surpassed, and all the other three albums that followed never reached that unique first album.

Came today.

I stumbled upon a Fiona Apple video on YouTube about her rendition of “Why try to change me now”, followed by “When I get low I get high”. Both not songs on the “When the pawn…” album. But still, I wanted to hear more of her voice, while I did some new plotting and sketching of my next project, I ran through the “When the pawn” album and, man, wonderful. Sometimes 21 years are worth the wait.

Share of Trouble - Out Now! (Sort of...)

Strange times, folks. In the middle of a global crisis, I managed to ready my next book. Five Troubleshooter Novellas that collected over the last years. Out now on Amazon and Smashwords.com as eBook and paperback. In the coming days also on other ebook platforms.

Very similar to my Pieces of Trouble novellas collection from a few years back. I had creative time on my hands during the re-re-re-work of my current science fiction novel “The Transport” that does not find an end. But I had all these small-ish Troubleshooter stories around on my disk drive, calling out to me, “finish us, finish us”. Who couldn’t resist that call?

Five For Forever Promotion - formidable 0,99 Cent summer read

Amazon will have my romantic comedy "Five for Forever" on promotion for 0,99 cents from July 28th to August 4th. Beach, plane, or train time no longer becomes boring! Dive into the glamorous world of Louise, the foremost actress of our times and her romance with the widowed boat builder Rick. Four kids included.

Getting closer to point "Writing-Burn-Down-Zero"

My new day job that I started earlier this year comes with a longer commute on the train. Time effectively spent with writing on my current book, a science fiction thriller romp with a lot of “citations” from classics such as “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, “The Terminator”, or “Independence Day”. The writing process for me comes in several stages. Ideation and plotting are the core creative parts, fleshing out the story from a one liner (“A bunch of stranded aliens try to steal back their spaceship from US military”) to a fifty chapter structure. After that it’s writing. The most challenging part. Will the story idea hold up to hundred-thousand words? Will the characters be interesting enough to hold the reader’s attention for such a long time? Will all the plot-lines play out as sketched out?

Let me explain “Writing Burn Down Zero”: Burn down is my take on agile project methodology, adapted for writing. The fifty-plus chapter cards are my task repository, writing one after another — not necessarily in chapter order — is like developing a piece of software. One function point after another, each chapter stands on its own, with own drama and cast of characters, reactive or active, and with a small cliff hanger at the end. And the long list of chapters slowly burns down like a candle, two steps forward, one step back , putting flesh to the bare bone, creating life.

“Burn Down Zero” for my latest story approaches fast, I am running out of things to write, that moment when my burn down list will be empty. All chapters will be there. The story is there. All the characters are in. All stories within the story are resolved.

The story will be far from done, don’t get me wrong here. All over the place, I entered my open issue code “xxx”: missing story twists, missing descriptions, holes I found and was too lazy to resolve, missing characters. The next phase of work, resolving the xxx’ses, will take me as long as writing the story itself and usually adds ten percent of additional word count. I hate what’s ahead, but I love approaching Burn Down Zero! (Anytime next week)

The story is there.

It works!

I’ve made it this far!

A good feeling.

3 Things You Didn't Know About My Book "Teen Vampire Hunters"

• The inspiration for Aunt Louise was Margaret Rutherford, the 60ies Miss Marple actress. Originally she was supposed to snoop alongside the kids, but after I had included Dan and Tiff into the story, things became too crowded, so she remained a supporting player.

• The solution to the cellar mystery (open / closed casket) came as one of the very last story pieces. Usually I go more prepared into a storyline, especially for such a crucial bit. There simply seemed no solution at first. Risky, to build the story first and then solve the how-done-it But I dodged that bullet successfully in the end.

• I had intended to write “Teen Spaceship Hunters” as the second installment of the series. But the vampire story somehow created more initial story points in my notepad than the spaceship storyline. Spaceship Hunters is now back in the writing queue (as of today on slot #3, right after my current works “The Transport” and my first all German thriller “Säure”

And maybe a good time to remind you guys out there: the Teen Monster Hunter prequel “The Test” is available on Wattpad as a free read!

Troubleshooter for Free! Read it on Wattpad. No Catch. Honestly!

And, it’s done! Troubleshooter has arrived fully on Wattpad. All 50+ chapters!

Of course, if you prefer a paperback or an ebook on your Kindle or Nook, don’t worry: you can have it your way, too. Troubleshooter is available for all major ebook platforms plus paperback.