Archive for July, 2018

Writers and Holidays

Working writers have few days off. The stories are always there, constant companions demanding freedom. Characters, both the living and dead, drop in for a cup of coffee, and afternoon drink, a glass of wine, to discuss their worlds, which are more real than the default writers space.

The Fourth of July, a day like any other, a work day, with the manuscript calling demanding closure for plot holes and poor grammar and character flat character arcs.

Which leads me to my upcoming novel, Twilight’s Child.

“Twilight’s Child” is a Young Adult Fantasy Novel (12-18 years old) of 94,000 words (74 Scenes divided into 36 chapters) going through a final edit, and due for completion on July 31. I am seeking Beta Readers, an editor, and cover artists.

Twilights Child Elevator Pitch:

An eleven-year-old boy discovers he is a changeling, a faerie exchanged for a human child as part of the Tithe to hell and returns to the Twilight World of the Fae to rescue the child whose life he took.

Read “Shift.” Now Available at Amazon in eBook and Paper Back Formats.

2018
07/04
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CATEGORY
Editing
On Writing
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Grief

Grief consumes me. I sit to write, and the faces of the lost appear as my reflection in the screen. My grandfather, grandmother, all their generation long gone and buried. My mother and the men and women who raised and guided me, none survive. My father-in-law and mother-in-law, their siblings, gone to the grave too soon.

The heroes of my youth, the actors, the musicians, dying one by one, diminished by age to death.

And my youth dead and its memory hazy and fading. Soon, I fear, only the discomforts of old age will remain to treasure. Better that than the void of death.

For all these and more, I grieve, not because I want to, but because they parade across my monitor, within my mirror, and through my memory.

I want to speak with them once more, with all that passion, energy, and ignorance of youth. I need their wisdom at my age. They walked my path. I recall their dignity, their joy. They must have some advice, some explanation, some comfort. But I can’t hear them.

M. Frank Darbe

2018
07/04
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CATEGORY
Blogging
Journal
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Doldrums

Doldrums are defined as, “Equatorial regions of the Atlantic Ocean with calms, sudden storms, and unpredictable light winds”—thank you Webster’s. But there is more to that, I think, in human doldrums characterized by inactivity, stagnation, depression. That’s me, a human doldrum, tired of the calms seeking a sudden storm and light and unpredictable anything.

Yes, a little wind of the soul would do me, but I don’t expect it. It is one of those times when the words in my soul run stagnant and sour. Smiles and frowns are few, where the dominant expression is a strait lipped nothing.

M. Frank Darbe

2018
07/03
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CATEGORY
Blogging
Journal
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