Eight Hollow Years...

Excuse me. I'm a bit of a mess.

Nostalgia is nagging at me worse than a new knife wound, and I am not sure when I started crying, but it was probably eight years ago.

Eight years. Guys when I say that I can't even, believe that I can't even. I can't even, even, even!

And while you are sorting that out, permit me to wander a little.

When Skeleton Lake was first published, by Red Iris Books, I was scared of publishing. I'd been writing stories my whole life but I couldn't handle pressing the big red button by myself. I was young, I was terrified of failing, and even as I write this eight years later, having sold tens of thousands of books, I still am. I'd been an indie author a solid year before I signed on to publish my first full-length novel. Skeleton Lake, was that book.

One of my co-authors (Angela Sanders) loves Skeleton Lake, probably more than I do because it didn't make her bleed, or maybe it did and that's the whole problem. She always brings it up and talks about it like it's a breathing thing, even though I wrote the book eight years before I even met her. She speaks of the characters, the music, the world, and then she gets mad that I haven't published the end of the series. Then she throws me some serious shade because she knows how it ends.

Only three people on the planet know how it ends beside myself, one of them is married to me, one is my very first editor and co-author Larry Kollar, the other is other-Angela. Though, now I suppose when Brian (third and final coauthor) reads this he's going to expect me to tell him.

Maybe, I'll even do it.

The thing is, the ending gets to me. Truth be told, I have spent about nine years, being utterly afraid of what would happen at the end of that series. So much so, that it's still written in a notebook and stashed under my bed. The paper is yellowed with age, but I recognize the scrawl. The smell.

I wrote all my books by hand then. Sometimes I will go and read those pages, and remember how it felt to write them. How awful, and how alive, and how wicked I was between the lines.

And I tell myself I'll do it.  I am going to publish the end of the series. The last two books.

Only to remember I am afraid of it and find a new project to devote myself to instead.

But I am done putting it off. I came up with the concept of Skeleton Lake over ten years ago. In some ways, I am not the same author I was then; and in some ways I very obviously am. In the next few months, the Hollows series is being expanded to beautiful and macabre splendor I always wanted for it. Stay tuned in-crowd. This one's for you.

Thanks for 8 Hollow Years.