Seraphim STORM is Coming October 7th, 2016!

Pardon my radio silence. If only I could claim that I had been busy fighting off hoards of the ravenous undead or, even crazier, writing 24/7 (though the latter wouldn't be so terrible, I must admit).

Without going into too much detail, I've been busy. Both with life stuff, with writing stuff, and also mass killing things across the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is Fallout 4. But now that I am here, I have a super special awesome announcement regarding the second installment to the Project SERAPHIM Series, Seraphim STORM...

Finally!

Originally it had not been my intention to wait this long. Again, due to life-related issues regarding my health and employment situation (I really do wish I could lay claim to be writing 24/7 - I really do!), I have hit a few bumps in the road.

I'm here now, though, and at long last pushing this baby out the door next Friday, October 7th, 2016!

That's right.

It's kinda ironic how the beginning events of STORM take place around 2 years after ASCENT, leaving one to wonder whether or not I had intended this long break or not. (Spoilers: I really, really didn't.)

Anyway, more news and updates will follow. In the meantime, feel free to take a look at my website for more information. Additionally, Project SERAPHIM has an official Wiki now, for those who could use some catching up on the series and learn some additional bits of trivia that you probably most likely don't know about!

NEW RELEASE: What the Thunder Said

“Who is the third that walks always beside you?

When I count, there are only you and I together;

But when I look ahead up the white road,

There is always another one walking beside you.”

It begins with you. 

Here in what is known as the last safest haven in the world, where the dome of Ashwater protects the border of the city and millions of people within. In all of your twenty-nine years of living, it has been too long since you’ve seen so many unarmed people, casually moving on the iridescent streets. This place is a marvel to all of those who witness it. 

You’ve been here before, yet you don’t belong here. 

The only reason you exist is because you were summoned back home by your enforcer. You are a soldier, and you do what you are told. It’s what good soldiers do — what they are told. This is why you don’t question your enforcer why he had sent you to this place, where you had been born. Instead, you broaden your shoulders and carry yourself on like this is the last day you will ever die. 

Or must you live, instead? You have never been good with idioms, and it’s a flaw in which your enforcer has goaded you quite often. 

It is a lively city, if nothing else. Much livelier than you recall, with its spectacular glow of blues and greens and whites. You know you will never see another place like Ashwater. But you are not here to dawdle or take in the sights. 

Like any other day you repeat, like a reoccurring dream — you are here because it’s just another mission. If you fail, all these people, the ones carrying about their daily lives in blissful ignorance, will die.

It is downtown, in the heart of the city. You must be there now. 

After all, you’ve not much time.

Purchase a paperback and/or Kindle copy of

What the Thunder Said, a prequel novel

to the Project Seraphim series,

on Amazon!

Project SERAPHIM Prequel Cover Reveal

Been a while since you’ve seen one of these kinds of updates, huh?

Well, it’s happening. I’ve got a cover up for the prequel novel for Project SERAPHIM, which takes place 18 years prior to the events of the first novel, Seraphim ASCENT. It delves into the lives of certain characters in their youths and the event known as the First Cataclysm.

More updates will come. But in the meantime, take a look at the new pretty cover!

The cover reveal for the second Seraphim book, Seraphim STORM, should be coming soon!

Departed: Audiobook Release!

There may have been something I’ve neglected to mention, and that’s the announcement of my first ever audiobook release!

In terms of length and time, I figured that Departed would make a perfect candidate for testing those waters. It’s something I’ve seriously been considering since I bumped into a writer at the Portland Book Festival this summer, and he introduced the whole audiobook concept to me and just how simple the whole process really is.

For a first project, Salzman was great and easy to work with and, in my opinion, managed go above and beyond to bring the piece to life. From the emotional ticks to the little effects added in, it’s a very fun listen. I would recommend checking out his other works as well!

The Departed audiobook can be purchased on Audible, Amazon, and eventually on iTunes for $6.08 to $6.95! (And FREE if you have a membership on Audible.)

Also, if you do purchase a copy and listen (it is only an hour and a half long), please take the time to leave a review and/or rate on Goodreads. It would be much appreciated. :)

 

Let Me Tell You About My TERRIBLE PAST...

Lately I’ve been watching a lot of shows... which I know is what people say writers SHOULDN’T do. But when there are people who keep telling me, “You HAVE to watch [insert popular show title here]!” it does tend to get in the way sometimes.

So I tried giving this one show a shot. I’m not going to name names, but let’s just say that it pretends to focus on a female protagonist but wastes too much time on Generic McBlandpants White Male Lead #7638743.

McBlandpants is just that: Bland. He’s boring in every sense of the word, from his character, personality, to even the actor himself. I don’t like knocking on anyone’s appearance, since there’s nothing that the person can do about that, but... I blame the casting choice for picking someone so phenomenally dull to watch. Which is disappointing when the female lead is so much more interesting, but she’s constantly being pushed into a position where she is being told to “Wait here while I go ahead and do man stuff even though you’ve proven to be totally more capable than me!”

By the second episode, I continued to roll my eyes until they were flying out of my skull when he began to reveal his “tragic childhood backstory”. That’s when I just shut off the TV and went back to letting YouTube videos play while I got some work done.

Then it made me realize something: This show is not the first one to try and made a bland character seem more “interesting” by giving them a tragic childhood. Not by miles. Another one I watched recently did the same thing to another Generic McBlandpants White Male Lead #7638742, and it didn’t make me like that character any more, either.

I started to compare it to Criminal Minds (yes, another TV show. I am so sorry), because the characters are already interesting before you learn anything about where they came from. You can know nothing about their past, but they’re still fun to watch because of how the characters bounce off each other, and how the actors portray them. There could literally be an episode where they just hang out and make spaghetti and I’d still be engaged enough to watch the whole thing.

This is relevant to writing as well: A character’s history should only be as interesting as the character themselves. It’s fun to learn more about a character, but unless you’re actually invested in them, then telling us about how they watched their childhood friend drown in a river when they were only eight years old falls a little flat. I’m not going to care about a character simply because they had a hard life.

Give me a reason to actually like them. Don’t just copy and paste a wishy-washy sad yarn and think that’ll make them more relateable, because it won’t. I see people do this with rape trauma as well, but that’s a whole other rant altogether that I won’t go into now.

What I normally do, myself, is create a character first. After I’ve nailed down their personality, I work a story around them to help me better understand the way they think and feel. This helps me create a character whose life doesn’t revolve around their abusive parents, but grew or developed as a result of it.

Because, like any normal person, you shouldn’t allow a character to be defined by their tragedies.

Meal, Ready-to-Eat: A Review

For those of you who (somehow) don’t know, MREs = Meal, Ready-to-Eat. It’s a type of light field ration usually given to soldiers in active combat.

Having an older brother in the Marine Corps when I was a kid, we actually got quite a few of these MRE packages. Me and my sister would actually eat them for the hell of it, because some of them aren’t as bad as some images may imply. I’ll even admit that some do look like the personification of turds, but I’m someone who can put my visual bias aside and try a thing at least one time before I cast judgment.

You only live once, right?

A few months ago, my brother-in-law (who, like both of my siblings, are in the military) saw me looking at one of the MRE packages on the guest bedroom bed, and asked if I wanted to have it. With the caveat from my sister not to eat it all at once (like we did when we were dumb kids), because one package is supposed to sustain a solider for an entire day. Oops.

Either way, I was like, “Sure, why not?” It’s been a while, and writing a lot about military characters, I figured it might be good to refresh my memory.

Incidentally, a friend — I can’t remember who — asked me to document my experience and tell them about it. Since I can’t remember who, I took a bunch of pictures and decided to make a public post about it.

So here we go.

WARNING:
This post is full of spiders images!

NEW RELEASE: Departed (A Dead Man Does Tell Tales)

About time that I do another one of these, huh?

Anyway, this is my official announcement of the release of my novelette, Departed!

Completely separate from the science fiction series, PROJECT SERAPHIM, this paranormal/historical piece is about a man whose body is found in a field, only he’s not quite dead. Over time, he discovers that not only is he seemingly unable to die from fatal injuries, he also seems to possess strange abilities that allow him to feel and experience the lives of others around him.

It’s not a very good predicament to find yourself in, in colonial America.

(I also promise that amnesiacs will no longer be a reoccurring theme in my future works. Seriously.)

If you like historical pieces mixed with paranormal elements and a dabble of romance, feel free to check it out! It’s currently up for pre-order, but will be released this Friday. Currently it is a Kindle Exclusive, but I may consider publishing hard copies someday if I think that a short novelette such as this may be worth it.

On a more personal note, Departed was something that I had originally wrote years ago in college. Like PROJECT SERAPHIM, it was another piece that I decided to return and revamp. It was a lot of fun writing this, as I got to do a lot of research on 1600s America while putting my current knowledge to use. I’m passionate about history, and I’ve always wanted to write more about immortals.

Additionally, the characters of Departed also happen to be part of an even bigger project that I plan to work on someday, called Days be Done. I may work on that sometime on the sidelines of Seraphim in the near future.

Editing Prices Revamp!

Quick update!

I have been mulling over my editing prices, and decided to knock them down a bit. That way people can find affordable services for all their edit needs! Check them out here.

As you can see, I condensed my wordiness as well. I’m trying to do this thing where I don’t use more words than I have to.

Starting... now!

Book Formatting Hell

When I first published Seraphim Ascent almost a year ago, I had always been convinced that editing would always be the bane of my existence.

I was wrong.

It’s formatting. Formatting is what has flipped my sanity upside-down.

I am now convinced that if there is a Hell, and should I ever be sentenced down to it, I will be spending the rest of eternity doing nothing but formatting manuscripts. Not writing. Not editing. Just hours upon hours of fighting with page breaks and headers and footers popping up on the wrong pages. Forever.

In spite of my agony, however, I did manage to get the hang of it. I realized that I am not be the only one to experience this level or self-imposed torture. In fact, there are no doubt others out there who share my pain, and have no time or patience to spend several hours staring at a computer screen, scrolling down every page to make sure everything is utterly perfect.

Which is why I have decided that, starting today, I will be offering my services for doing book formatting for other writers as well.

So if you’re one of those poor sods who want to be spared a world of pain, check out my rates and consider me to bear the suffering for you.

I’m all self-sacrificing like that.

Writing With Depression

Most people wouldn’t think it, but the last few months I have been living in my own little circle of Hell. Not in the way that you would notice just by looking at me upon first glance, at least not right away. It happened in little strokes, little itches, little digs; festering like a scab that I couldn’t help but pick at unconsciously.

When I was a teenager, I was diagnosed with depression. But when you’re a that age, it’s a challenge to differentiate depression from teenage angst, so of course it got cast aside by both mine and my mother’s lack of acknowledgement for mental health. As I got older, the feelings didn’t disappear. In fact, they became something else. Like the scab, a series of unfortunate events shaped them into an incurable mark.

Depression is a hard thing to explain to people who don’t have it. In a way, I’m grateful for that. I wouldn’t wish the things I think and feel on anybody. The best examples I can give are provided by the talented Allie of Hyperbole and a Half, who authored Adventures in Depression Part One and Two. Additionally, Depression Quest is a scarily accurate depiction of what life is like living with this insidious disease.

But it doesn’t explain what life has been like for me personally. It doesn’t chronicle the aforementioned Hell that I’ve been living in, on repeat, for years if not my whole life. It’s different for everyone and yet it’s all the same — we’re living with monsters in our heads that are slowly trying to kill us. And for some, the monsters win. It’s a long and grueling battle, and one that no one should have to suffer alone.

Orphan Song

While going through my hard drive, I managed to find this old piece that a friend of mine – Rich Stuart – composed for me. In the past we had worked together on an official soundtrack for another novel of mine, some of which I have uploaded onto the WWW, but today I just feel like sharing an oldie but goodie that is more relevant to the PROJECT SERAPHIM Series.

This song in particular comes up in Chapter Eleven of Seraphim Ascent, and is slightly eluded to several times throughout the series.

Yes, there are lyrics to it, but I’ll have to do some digging to re-find them.

Crowdfunding Campaign #2

So I just started another crowdfunding campaign. My last one wasn’t very successful, and it may be partially due to the way Gofundme works in that you’re practically transparent until you’ve hit a certain milestone of donations.

I don’t like begging. It’s my least favorite thing to do. I’d been raised with the mentality that asking for help is a sign of weakness, and admitting that weakness makes you a lesser person. But the way I see it, I’m not begging for handouts. I’m raising awareness of my creative efforts by rewarding people for their generosity with something in return.

In the indie world, I’ve been told that you don’t really start reeling in a profit until you’ve at least hit your third book. I’m almost done with Seraphim Storm, the second installment of the PROJECT SERAPHIM series. Additionally, I have a prequel novel lined up, as well as other short stories and novellas that I would like to see the light of day sometime in the near future.

No one ever said it was going to be easy, and I had no illusions in my mind that it would be. Despite being a writer, I’m not particularly well-spoken, and I’m only just learning about my new-found confidence in my abilities.

Are there days where I want to just say “fuckit” and throw in the towel? Of course. It’s normal to have those moments of so-called weaknesses. But life is short, and I can’t waste it away with the regret of never following my dreams, doing the thing I love.

That said, if you have any time or money to spare, drop a few dollars into my crowdfunding page on IndieGogo. If you don't cash, then spread the word via Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or anything in the crazy social media world.

Every little bit helps. :)

Why I Decided To Write A Series

As I’ve mentioned before, PROJECT SERAPHIM had originally been planned as a standalone novel. A very gargantuan novel that rivals many tomes. But my stubborn side refused to have it any other way, even when published authors had advised me against it. I had no major reason for it, other than convincing myself that it just was not necessary.

But when did I start to have second thoughts? What made me decide to throw in the proverbial towel and write a series?

It was after I had committed myself to dividing my sci-fi/horror tome into a duology — two books — that reality smacked me in the face.

RRW's Top 10 Books

Recently I was tagged on Facebook to list my top 10 books that have influenced my life in some way.

Considering I was spending more personal time offline than than on Facebook, I didn't get the chance to tack away. But now I'm able, and since then have decided that the list was important enough to me to put on my blog, with a few additional details that weren't on my original post.

That said, here they are!

1. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

There's something about Vonnegut's style that just jives with me. I also have very fond memories of this book from my days in high school, more specifically my classes with my English teacher. In fact, I still have that gut reaction to think or blurt "So it goes" when something/someone dies.

In which case, so it goes.

2. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

This book made me cry. It made me cry a lot.

I didn't care that much for "journal-styled" novels even back then, but Flowers for Algernon struck a cord in me that I can't ever quite describe. So much so that I wound up naming a character after the titular lab rat, Algernon.

3. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

I know I'm naming a lot of old books that many of us were assigned to read in high school English, and there's a good reason for that: They're just downright damned good books. And I think a lot of kids can benefit reading them and, better yet, learn to enjoy them.

Fahrenheit 451 was different, though - I didn't read it because of a class assignment. I actually read it out of spite over not getting into the advanced English class in my freshman year, though I believed I deserved to. After all, I liked the required reading for the advanced classes better than the standard class that I was assigned to.

I read Fahrenheit 451 not out of necessity because my teacher told me to, but because I wanted to. And it inspired me to seek out more books - by Ray Bradbury included - outside of the classroom. Since then he's become one of my favorite writers.

Rest in peace, Ray.

SERAPHIM ASCENT is Now Available!

SERAPHIM ASCENT: Book One of a new
post-apocalyptic sci-fi/horror series
by R. R. Washburn

→ Paperback ↔ Amazon ↔ Smashwords ↔ Barnes & Noble ↔ Kobo ↔ Apple ←

 

---

Well, it’s finally here. It’s been several years in the making, has gone through various drafts, edits, and rewrites. But now I’m slapping it up and marching onwards to the completion of Book Two.

Seraphim Ascent has gone through a variety of transformations over the years. It once started off as a very video game-inspired novel back when I first wrote it in high school. In college it shifted from an action/shooter-esque style to a tale of what has become to be about conspiracies, mind control, mutations, plagues, war, and ultimately about identity. Not just for Rey, but for a bunch of characters trying to find their place.

Originally this series was intended to be a standalone novel, with the first two drafts capped at about 360,000 words. I like big books so at the time I didn’t see anything amiss until people pointed out to me just how insane that would be to print for a first novel. By the second and third drafts I’d planned to write a duology, but by the time I was writing what has now become Seraphim Storm, I felt like I was cheating a lot of the characters’ out of their full potential. Storylines I wanted to explore were constrained by the idea that I probably shouldn’t write about 360,000 word novel, which risked a lot of character arcs I wanted to explore.

But I’m the boss. It’s my story, and I can make it go however the hell I want.

So it became a trilogy, and then a series when I started planning out plotlines for a fourth novel.

At this point, I make no such commitments to numbers to say how long this crazy story will go on. It’s a start, and that’s all I care about.

As Rey would put it, “The only certainty is going forward.”