Mynx Writes

I have been a writer for almost twenty years. By writer, I mean someone who has penned numerous stories and novels, but never had anything published. In 2006 I got tired of hearing from agents that my novel, Nephiim Genesis of Evil was a great story, but they didn’t think there was a market for it. This was before the ebook rage, at a time when the term self-publishing had an even worse stigma than it does now. I had a friend who encouraged me to go on ahead and self-publish the novel. I was hesitant but decided to jump in. I’m glad I did. Here are a few things I learned from that experience. Self-Publishing Was Easier Than I Thought It Would Be In 2006, I had to hunt for a printer to publish Nephilim and I was worried that the end product would look like a self-published book. I was pleasantly surprised that the released book was just like anything you could pick up at Barnes & Noble. I was also expecting to have a harder time getting it into stores and places online...

Insomnia. It creeps up on you and doesn't let you go.  One minute you're so tired that you can't keep your eyes open, and the next minute your brain is on overdrive and you're still so tired that you can't keep your eyes open.  So you lay there and let your brain run rampant.  In my case, last night, it was on full overdrive.  I did everything.  I rolled over.  I put a pillow over my head.  I got up and went to the bathroom.  I got a glass of water.  I even grabbed my phone and tweeted to whoever was awake and listening for insomnia to go away and tell my brain to shut up on the way out. And then, it came to me... Tommyknockers. Not the movie - the book. Have you ever read it?  "Late last night and the night before, Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, Knocking at the door..." I'm no genius, but this book holds the solution. Stephen King, when he wrote "Tommyknockers", was expressing an idea that writers all over the w...

Would you like to hear about the time I killed a man in cold blood and got away with it? Or, I could tell you about the time that someone killed me and I was trapped between this world and the afterlife for several hundred years. How about that one time – the time when I survived a zombie apocalypse? Have I told you that story yet? I have done these things, and more, because of the library. I have traveled aboard spaceships and taken exotic vacations to planets that don’t exist. I have stumbled into parallel realities through wardrobes, paintings, and hidden portals in the backyard shed. I have colonized worlds. I have lived on a moon base. I’ve been abducted by aliens and lived through a nuclear winter. I’ve actually survived several zombie apocalypses – not just the one. The library was where I fell in love with dragons, unicorns, and elves, and then brought them home to play with in my imagination. I found monsters in the library, as well. They hid themselves in the ...

For those of you in the know, the title of this post speaks for itself, and you are either laughing at me or nodding your head in sympathy because you are planning on spending the month of November much the same way I will be -- glued to your computer, gulping down coffee, and neglecting your family and friends until you have completed your goal of writing a fifty-thousand word novel. For those of you who are new to NaNoWriMo Madness , don't let that first paragraph scare you away.  I didn't mean it.  Okay, so I did, but it's not as bad as it sounds.  Really, its a lot of fun, and your friends and family will be so proud of you when it's over that they won't hold a grudge about you neglecting them for thirty days straight.  (In theory, anyway.) So, what exactly is this NaNoWriMo Madness of which I speak?  Simply put, it is that festive event that takes place every year during the month of November where aspiring novelists test their resolve (and their san...

I like to think that with any luck, I will manage to be late for my own funeral.  That's not to say that I'm not a punctual person.  No indeed!  I pride myself for being on time.  If I set a time and say, "I'll be there!", come rain, nor snow, nor dark of... oh, wait.... I'm not a letter carrier. Anyhoo. My name is Marie, and I have a procrastination problem.  I doubt very much that a twelve step program can save me anymore, because I'm getting too old and set in my ways.  And so, I've resigned myself to my fate.  I will forever be stressing over deadlines, whether they be outside sources or self-imposed.  My favorite thing to do when I have said deadline looming is to jump on the information highway and surf teh shiny interwebz until my eyes fall out research my chosen topics, but I tend to get distracted.  Often. Which in Mynx time, is something like every seven minutes, give or take. And so, my day goes something like this: W...