Why hello there! You're getting this message because you clicked a link in an earlier email indicating that you'd like to "skip ahead" and receive some behind-the-scenes stuff I'm writing about my Kickstarter for Gore Point. If you've changed your mind and would like to undo the whole "skip ahead" thing, just click here. (NOTE: This will NOT remove you from my email list - just the "skip ahead" part.)

---------------

TRIGGER WARNING: If you're freaked out by things like demons, scroll carefully or just close this email right now. There are concept images below, and they're the stuff of nightmares.

------------------------------------------

Hello again!

I've spent a lot of time recently examining my thought process as it goes into writing my stories. Normally I write like a black box: Ideas go in and a story comes out, and I couldn't tell you what weird alchemy happens in the middle.

But right now I'm recording the author's commentary for Gore Point, so I can't take anything for granted. I'm needing to find ways to explain why I wrote what I wrote to you, the reader, as part of that commentary.

So that's what I'd like to tell you about today: The weird shit that happens behind the scenes as a Truant story takes place.

(I'm also finding that I love the hell out of this process. I think I'll start recording commentaries for all of my books.)

Before we get going, a quick PSA: If you want to get my new demon-fighters book Gore Point without waiting another 3-6 months for it to be on Amazon and the other stores, be sure to grab it now. There's only ONE WEEK LEFT in the Gore Point early launch campaign, so if you don't get it in the next week, you won't be able to get it for quite a while.

​Click here to get your "early access" copy of Gore Point.

Now, with that out of the way, let's talk about the dark places inside my odd writer's mind.

The story so good, I wanted to drop everything and steal it.

I remember when Sean first showed me the writeup for Gore Point. We were traveling together, possibly on our way to speak at the NINC conference in St. Petersburg (Florida, not Russia. Although Russia would have been cool).

He was an asshole to show me at all. The story package (a thing we call "beats" because it contains suggested plot points) wasn't meant for ME to write. Instead, he was showing me someone else's story in the way you might show a starving person food they're not allowed to eat.

"Dude!" I said, totally entranced by the story and its fantastic lore. "I can't wait to write this!"

And Sean said, "Wait. This isn't for you. This story is for me and Dave."

"DAVE? You're showing me a story meant for DAVE? Why would you do that?"

At this point I was salivating. Frothing. Preparing to attack, because my primal writer's nature was starting to come out, regressing me to the aggressive and murdering ways of wild, untamed writers who roamed the forests and savannas of the past, back before authors were tamed and made civil through domestication, like how wolves were turned into dogs.

"I thought you'd be interested in seeing a story I'll be writing with Dave, was all," Sean said.

"A story I can't actually write?! You thought a story I'm not allowed to write - a story this fucking cool that I'm not allowed to touch - would be interesting to me?!"

Sean, like one of the hapless antelopes that feral writers slaughtered and ate raw in the before-times, looked at me as wide-eyed and innocent as a doe. "Isn't it?" he asked.

The fool. As if I could be pleased for Dave in this instance.

I loved Gore Point already. I wanted it. Like Smegol with his Precious, Gore Point was already MINE. If Sean gave it to his other co-author, I would have to follow Dave around in the shadows the whole time he was working on it, lurking and talking to myself and scheming ways to nab the Precious while he wasn't looking.

Truth was, I was already booked to the gills. I had a project on my plate already, and several more stories to write behind it. But I didn't care. I wanted Gore Point. I would stop at nothing to possess it!

But then life happened and I forgot about it for a while. Until it came back around and Dave never got to it ... and Gore Point became mine after all.

Backdraft with demons

"Dude," Sean said when I could finally clutch the Precious to my chest, defending it from Dave's return at all costs, jealously pleased that I was going to get to write Gore Point after all. "It's like the movie Backdraft ... but with demons."

I was in. Backdraft was a total 90s staple. Kurt Russell. Jennifer Jason Leigh. Donald Sutherland. Plus Billy Baldwin, who just so happened to be the second-best Baldwin behind Alec, better than Stephen and miles beyond Daniel, who they only gave roles when they felt sorry for him. "You go, we go." I remembered crying over the funeral at the end.

It wasn't the first time I'd written a story described as "It's like this movie or TV show, but with this twist instead. Robot Proletariat began as "Downton Abbey with robots," for instance. Those comparisons are only ever a starting point, with the story diverting wildly from the reference very quickly, but the reference helps nail the project's flavor. In this case, I was down with Gore Point's flavor more than Disturbed was down with the sickness.

What I dug most was the world, and the ideas behind the story that informed its history. For example:

• There was a thin place between planes of existence (between Earth and Hell), known as the Gore Point.
• The land around the Gore Point had been slowly twisted by the evil leaking through the rifts that regularly form inside it, twisting the trees into horrid shapes, denuding the land, and drawing sensitive people into its maw to commit ritual suicide.
• Coolest of all, the Gore Point wasn't new to our world. It'd been there for decades and decades. Instead of your typical horror/sci-fi in which something terrible happens and people have to deal with it, this was an ordinary world that had needed to learn to deal with Hellish incursions as if they were ordinary everyday occurrences - terrible and nightmarish though they may be.
• Our characters worked for one of many specialized brigades inside a walled-off city built around the Gore Point. These brigades had learned to fight demons like any other pests, using specialized weapons somehow made possible by the rift energy itself. The battle scenes were going to be epic.

Sean gave me concept art showing the kinds of creatures that might come from the Hell-rifts as they formed (before the brigades managed to close them), but that art was someone's property so I can't share it here. Instead, I've re-created similar demons using Midjourney to show you. Check out this stuff from your darkest dreams:

But the beats were only the beginning.

One of the things I keep tripping over while recording the audio commentary (a sample is here in audio and transcript format, if you're interested) is trying to remember what was in the original beats versus what I invented from scratch as I wrote.

The answer is interesting - part of that "black box" I mentioned before. I don't normally think as I work. It's not an analytical thing. It's more like I go into a fugue, my fingers moving without thinking much about it. It feels less like inventing a story than watching a pre-existing story unfold inside my head. So I'm not sure what came from where.

I'm more an observer than a creator, basically.

Any set of beats (which are more about background on the world and its history, characters, locations, and fixtures than actual story, which in itself is only provided as rough concepts) are like a tiny hole I can peer through into whichever subliminal place the story is already occurring. As I write, I'm able to stick my head further and further through that hole, and am therefore able to see more.

But because I'm watching rather than creating, my stories always surprise me. No wonder I can't remember what Sean provided and what I came up with myself.

Borrowing and remixing

Some writers will tell you that there are no new stories, only the retelling of old ones. Others believe that entirely new stories exist, and they'll spend their writing lives trying to find them.

Personally, I believe something in the middle. I feel that the act of creation is less about finding something wholly new, and is instead about remixing things around us in ways nobody's done before, using our own unique voice to do so.

Allow me to quote a WONDERFUL little movie called Vengeance. The main character (a podcaster trying to make his mark) asks a strangely wise hicksville record producer what he’d tell him if he (the podcaster) asked him (the producer) how to find his voice in writing. And he says:

I couldn't agree more. A writer's voice is original and unique, but it comes in part from repeating and reflecting the world around them: remixing and borrowing elements, then creating something new from them.

I already told you I borrowed the framing of Backdraft. I also borrowed from Hellraiser, Constantine, Joe Hill's The Fireman, and a video game called Half-Life. Some weapons came from other video games, but most feel like they came out of nowhere, surely inspired by some influence I can't remember. I reflect by paying homage to dream sequences I've seen before, and I explore character interactions by rearranging others I've seen in books, movies, or on TV. (Sean and I sometimes explain potential twists to each other by stumbling for a while and then finally saying, "It's like in X, when Person A did a certain thing and Person B reacted in this way." Strangely, a lot of those references come from Friends no matter what genre we're writing.)

We even "borrow" actors. Most of our stories are cast like movies. I tend to write characters as if a certain actor is playing them because I think cinematically, and having actors' faces on my characters makes the story I'm watching in my head easier to see.

It's all so damn cool.

Suffice to say, I'm really, really enjoying recording the Author's Commentary for Gore Point. I've even gotten it into my head to start doing the same for all of my books one at a time, probably starting with Fat Vampire.

So, you know ... expect that soonish.

One last thing before I go:

Remember, Gore Point is only available for purchase for another week, and after that it won't be available for several months.

At 9am Eastern time next Friday, the campaign will end and Gore Point will move into phase 2 of its life, wherein it stops being an early-access special edition (complete with signed books and commentary and bonuses and stuff) and starts being a normal book. At that point, I'll offer it exclusively on my website for a while ... and after that I'll put it up for sale on Amazon and all of the other bookstores.

​So if you'd like to read Gore Point now, be sure to get it here BEFORE next Friday at 9am ET.

(Especially if you want the special edition of the book or things like signed copies. Gore Point will eventually be for sale on the usual bookstores, but I have NO PLANS to offer signed copies or cool special editions of it again.)

So that's the story. That's all I've got for today.

But I've got a question for you before we part: What do you think about this idea of behind-the-scenes-with-the-author audio commentaries for books? Does "knowing how the sausage is made" interest you as a reader? Hit reply and let me know!

Also reply if you have questions, or if you just want to say hello! Unlike a lot of authors out there, I reply to every email.

Thanks for reading!
JT

P.S: If you have pesky questions about Gore Point on Kickstarter (how it works, how to get your copy, why I'm doing it, or really anything at all), reply and ask those questions, too. It's 100% cool if you understand everything and just aren't into Kickstarter ... but I don't want you missing out just because you're confused!

​