A few weeks ago, I attended StokerCon – the annual gathering of Horror folk – in San Diego. A lot of times at conventions, I’m so busy with being on panels and conducting workshops that I end up not getting to talk to many people, which sucks, because StokerCon is like a family reunion in many ways. But this year, I managed to spend time with a number of friends and colleagues, sometimes only in brief conversations, sometimes in much longer ones, and it was wonderful. During two separate conversations – one with Brian Keene and one with Ronald Malfi – we got to talking about writers who had great careers, but for whatever reasons stopped writing. Sometimes they’re simply not productive anymore for one reason or another, but other times it’s like they dropped off the face of the Earth.
I began wondering why some writers quit
while others continue chugging along, regardless of setbacks and self-doubts. And
as a creative writing teacher, I’ve seen people who stop before they really get
started or who quit along the way. Why do some writing careers fizzle out, and
what, if anything, can be done to help writers keep doing what they love?
Well, that’s the topic of this blog post, isn’t it?
Before We Get Started, It’s Okay To . . .
·
Try writing,
decide it’s not for you, and move on to something else.
·
Come back to
writing after a period of time away from it.
·
Write once in
a while.
·
Play around
with writing for fun, without any intention of publishing your work.
·
Take breaks
from writing whenever you need to.
·
Try different
types of writing without ever specializing.
There’s
nothing wrong with exploring writing as opposed to dedicating your life to it
as a Sacred Calling. So often on social media, I see people posting that you
have to be 1000% devoted to a writing career and treat it like a full-time
business or else you’re not a “real” writer. I think these people confuse
“Writer” the identity with “writing” the activity. Writing is something people
do, and you can do as much or as little of it as you like, and it can play a
huge role in your life (as it does in mine) or a small role. And how much
writing you do can change with time and circumstance. It’s all good. So yes,
it’s okay to quit writing forever, but this blog entry is for writers who want
to keep writing.
Why Do Some Writers Quit Almost Before They Start?
·
They like the
idea of having produced writing, but they aren’t in love with language and
story. Most writers begin with love of story
and then seek to become writers, but not everyone. Some people think the idea
of being a writer is cool, and then they start exploring writing. It’s kind of
like falling in love first then getting married vs. an arranged marriage. Both
types of unions can succeed or fail, they just start at different places. So
writers who begin with a desire to have the identity of a writer can eventually
fall in love with the process of writing. I suspect not many, though. My guess
is these are the kind of writers who are attracted by the idea of AI writing
stories for them.
·
They don’t
enjoy reading, so they don’t read. Yes,
it’s possible to write without being a reader. It’s even possible you’ll write
something decent. But if you don’t like reading, you probably only like the
idea of expressing yourself, and writing seems like a simple, cheap way to do
that. All you need is yourself and something to write with. But if you don’t
love the written word, odds are you won’t stick with writing. Nothing wrong
with that. Maybe you’ll eventually find a mode of self-expression you do love.
·
They discover
writing isn’t as easy as they thought it would be. “But creative writing is supposed to be fun! It’s
freeform expression and anything goes, right?” some students say. It is if all
you want to do is play, and there’s noting wrong with that. But if you decide
you want to write work that’s publishable and that people want to read, you’ll
need to work as well. And work isn’t always fun.
·
They don’t
know why they’re writing. Having a
reason for doing something, a purpose you’re trying to fulfill, a goal you’re
trying to reach can help you keep going when the work gets hard and you
encounter some serious obstacles along the way. If you don’t have a reason to
write, you don’t have a reason to keep going when it gets hard.
·
They’re
worried about writing the “right” thing. These writers have been told so often that if they want to succeed, they
need to produce the “right” kind of book (or story, article, poem). So they
can’t decide what to write, and they end up not writing. Or they try a genre
they don’t love because they think they have to, they end up hating writing,
and quit.
·
They get bored
and start a new project. Even if you
don’t have ADD, finding the discipline to see a project through to completion can
be tough. You have to learn not to be attracted to the next pretty-shiny if you
want to finish anything. These writers don’t quit so much as they never
complete a piece of writing.
Why
Do Some Writers Quit Early in Their Career?
·
Self-doubt: I think most creative people experience self-doubt
about themselves as artists, and for many of us, this self-doubt never goes
away. In order to keep going, we need to learn to live with self-doubt, to
experience it but not let it stop us, to realize there’s reason it’s called self-doubt.
It’s a negative function of the ego. We create it ourselves, and – if we can’t
uncreate it – we can learn to understand where it comes from and not give it
power over us. If we can’t, we may quit, even if we’re starting to see some
success from our efforts.
·
Fear of
failure: Some writers are so afraid of failure
that even if they finish work, they don’t do anything with it. Even writers who
are starting to establish a career may become so paralyzed by the possibility
that failure will inevitably strike that they stop writing before it hits. The
truth is, you will fail, maybe a lot, especially early on. Experiencing
failure, feeling shitty for a while, then getting back to work will help you
deal with the next failure. I think for some people the word failure is
crippling all by itself. Maybe if we thought of failures as temporary setbacks
or That-didn’t-work-this-time’s, failure wouldn’t impact us so severely.
But some writers never get over their first big failure, and they’re afraid of
experiencing failure again, so they quit writing.
·
Fear of
success: When I first learned about this
concept a few decades ago, I thought it sounded ridiculous. Who would be afraid
of success? That’s what we all want, right? But success means we draw attention
to ourselves and more is expected of us. And if others don’t pressure us to
maintain or increase our level of success, we do it to ourselves. That pressure
can become so overwhelming that we may end up blocked for good.
·
Fear of
rejection or difficulty dealing with rejection when it comes. Creative writing students tell me this is their
number-one fear about sharing their work, even with classmates and me, let
alone sending it out to traditional publishers or self-publishing it. These
writers either never send anything out or they quit after one or more
rejections. Or if they’re self-publishing, bad reader reviews and – even worse
– lack of interest in their work cause them to quit. Rejection of one kind or
another is guaranteed in the writing life, and we have no choice but to learn
to deal with it if we want to keep going. I’m at a point in my career where I
sell my work regularly, and while I don’t receive rejections as often as I did
when I first started submitting my work forty-two years ago, it still happens.
And yes, it still sucks. But I’ve often had the experience of having a story
rejected a number of times, only for the next editor to think it’s absolutely
brilliant and want to publish it. The story didn’t change. Only the editor did.
This has taught me that a rejection just means that a particular person said no
to a particular story at a particular time. It means nothing more than that,
and it’s certainly not a reason to stop writing if you love it.
·
Their work
isn’t getting published or only getting published sporadically. Once I began selling short fiction in my mid-twenties,
it wasn’t as if I sold multiple stories a year. I was lucky to sell one, maybe
two if I was especially fortunate that year. Those sales were like a drink
water to a thirsty man in a desert. They might not have been much, but they
kept me going a little while longer until the next drink came. Society tells us
that if we aren’t a massive success right out of the gate, we’re a failure and
might as well pack it in. Some people do have fast success. It’s rare, but it
happens. These writers face the problem of maintaining that success and
building on it to become even more successful. Usually, their time in the sun
is limited. A writing career is a marathon, not a sprint, and you need to
accept that you’re in for the long haul if you want to keep going.
·
No reviews or
bad reviews. Negative reader response to our work
is no fun, but indifference is worse. I’ve produced work that I think is some
of the best stuff I’ve ever done, only for it to receive almost no attention
from readers. That can be extremely demoralizing, especially after you’ve
worked so long and so hard to create a piece of work. Why keep going if no one
gives a shit about your writing or if they loathe it? Why continue to work hard
only to receive no reward? This is why creating the work needs to be your
first, best reward. If you get few reviews or a lot of negative ones, that
doesn’t change the experience you had of making a story. If we can continue to
focus on art’s true reward – making art in the first place – it can help us get
through a lot of not-so-fun experiences along the way,
·
Progress is
taking longer than they thought. Old
pros on convention panels used to say that the first million words were
practice. The late Horror author Alan Rodgers once told me that it takes about
ten years to start publishing regularly. That jibes with my experience. Some
writers don’t take that long, and some take longer. It’s that
marathon-not-a-sprint thing again. It can be hard to keep going when it seems
like all your effort is getting you nowhere. I think of the famous quote from
the I-Ching here: “Perseverance furthers.” That’s the only guarantee you
get in an artistic life, that if you keep working, you’ll be farther along your
path tomorrow than you are now. This is another reason why it's important that your
first reward be producing the work itself.
Why
Do Some Writers Quit Mid-Career?
You’re publishing your work fairly regularly, readers
in general respond to it positively, you’ve been nominated for – and maybe even
won – an award or two, and you might even be making a little money from writing.
But maybe you’re not as far along as you’d hoped by this point, and maybe it
looks like this level of success is all you’ll be able to obtain. It can be
tough to keep going if you believe you’ve gone as far as you can. Writers in
this situation – or who feel like this, whether or not it’s true – may
well be tempted to quit altogether. There are other specific reasons, too.
·
Imposter syndrome:
You believe you’re a fraud and any day
the rest of the world will figure it out. You decide you might as well quit now
before you’re exposed. Whenever I feel like this, I pull one of my author
copies off the shelf and flip through it, or I pull up my bibliography on my computer
and skim it. Doing these things helps remind me that I couldn’t possibly fool
so many editors over the course of so many years. I may also look at some
positive reader reviews on Goodreads or Amazon to remind myself that there are
readers who like my work.
·
The Writer’s
Disease – Envy: You look around at your
contemporaries – or worse, younger writers – and envy their successes and begin
to resent them (and the world at large). That kind of envy can eat an artist
alive until they quit or just stop producing work. I think of it as a kind of
mental/spiritual cancer for writers. Whenever I feel this way, I tell myself
that the eighteen-year-old kid that I was when I first started out would be
thrilled and amazed to see the career I have today.
·
Career
setbacks: Publisher folding, agent severing your
business relationship, editor telling you that they won’t be looking at your
next book because the last one didn’t sell enough copies, the book you put your
heart and soul into and are convinced is the greatest thing you’ve ever written
receives the worst reviews of your career. . . Any one of these things can
demoralize a writer and make them want to give up, and if more than one
happens around the same time, it can be devastating. All of us will experience
career setbacks. My first novel deal was canceled by the publisher because they
“no longer felt comfortable with the book,” whatever the hell that means. My
agent and I submit work to editors who ghost us (This is a relatively new
thing, at least in my experience. How hard is it to send an email that says NO?
It’s only two letters, for Christ’s sake.) If you’re already struggling
mentally, emotionally, and financially in your career, any setback could be the
one that finally strikes a mortal blow and gets you to call it quits. As I’ve
mentioned before, finding fulfillment in creating the work in the first place
can help you weather setbacks, as will starting to work on something new.
·
Unable to
build a large audience: When you think
of how many people live on the planet, even bestselling authors are read by a
small percentage of humans. Most people don’t read for enjoyment (and many
people around the world can’t read or are too busy trying to survive to kick
back with a book and relax). Most writers have very small audiences, and while
they might increase the size of their audience over time, they may reach a point
where they’re unable to add more readers. This sucks if you depend on writing
for your income, and it sucks if it makes you feel that your career is
stagnating. Whenever I start to feel this way, I ask myself how many people do
I need in my audience for it to be worthwhile for me to write something. Ten?
Twenty? A hundred? A thousand? I have a day job as a college English professor,
so I don’t have to worry about audience size for economic reasons. I do try to
remind myself, once again, that the work itself is my first reward. I also
remind myself to value and appreciate the readers I do have instead of
pining for all the readers I don’t have.
·
Promoting more
than writing. In the age of social media, this can
be a real problem. Publishers expect you to promote your work and often they
calculate this into their promotion budget for you. Sometimes that budget is
zero because they put the responsibility for promoting solely on you (not that
they’d ever admit it). Most writers aren’t comfortable trying to hawk their
wares 24/7 on the internet, and doing so can wear them down emotionally or, if
they don’t manage to promote often, make them feel like a failure. They end up
promoting more than they write, and they quit because what’s the point of
having a goddamned writing career if you don’t get to do any fucking writing? I
try to keep my promotion balanced with my writing. The writing comes first,
because without it, I have nothing to promote. I have a few social media
accounts, a website, an Amazon page, this blog, a newsletter, and a YouTube
channel. I try to regularly promote on social media, but only once a day, if
that. I also post other types of content so readers don’t get sick of me, and I
repost other writers’ promotional messages to be a good literary citizen. The
basic rule of thumb I’ve seen is that you should put out three non-sales
messages for every sales message you post. As for my newsletter, blog, and
YouTube channel, I try to post new content at once a month (but I often don’t have
the time). Common wisdom is you should post content once a week, but there’s no
way I can do that and still write as much as I do, so I don’t worry about it.
Again, the writing comes first. And if you can’t write and promote because of
your overall life/work schedule, then screw promoting. Write and enjoy writing
and let the other aspects your career take care of themselves. Writing – not
promoting – is why you got into this gig in the first place. Don’t ever lose
sight of that.
·
Promotional
efforts don’t seem to work. The
secret of promotion is that no one – including mega-corporations – has any idea
if specific promotional efforts actually work. And ones that do seem to work
one time can fail utterly the next. It’s a crapshoot. You can increase your
odds of success by learning more about promotion, but you’ll never be able to
guarantee success. (Unless you write a diet book, self-help book, or
how-to-have-better sex book.) Try not to worry too much how successful your
promotional efforts are, because no matter what you do, you’ll never really
know. So promote and hope for the best, and like I said above, don’t let
promotion overwhelm – and even take the place of – your writing.
·
Not making
much (or any) money. My second agent once told me that “No
one goes into this business to make money.” If you want to make money in
America, become a doctor or a lawyer. (Or a corrupt politician.) Writing – not
counting technical and business writing – begins with a need for creative
fulfillment. We seek money from our writing so we won’t have to work a
soul-sucking non-creative job. That way, we’ll have more time to write. So if
you’re a writer, you’re almost guaranteed to make little-to-no money from your
work, and what income you do have will be sporadic and unstable. Living a life
of economic uncertainty can wear anyone down over time, and if you have health
problems – especially as you age – it can be a nightmare. Healthcare is hella
expensive in the U.S.A., and a lot of writers’ strategy for dealing with health
issues is to hope and pray that they’ll never get sick. Even if they have a
condition that won’t kill them, if it’s a painful one and they can’t afford
treatment, the pain will make it difficult, if not impossible, to work. When I
was in my twenties, I was on GEnie, a message board service that was like a
proto social media service. Lots of professional writers were on there, and
they posted stuff about living the writing life that I’d never read in
interviews before, and one of those things was how difficult it was to be poor,
even if you were regularly publishing and winning awards. A lot of those
writers said they weren’t producing any more work than they did before they
became full-time writers because they were depressed or in ill health. That’s
one of the reasons I got a day job and have kept it all these years. I’m lucky
that my job still allows me time to write, and that I’m generally a fast
writer. But establishing a writing career is hard enough without having to constantly
worry about the wolf at the door.
·
No recognition
from readers and critics. Every year
when people start posting “best-of” lists on social media (or lists of favorite
writers or writers you should be reading), writers lament about how their name
never appears on those lists. They also complain about how few reviews they get
in Publisher’s Weekly or Booklist, or on Goodreads and Amazon,
and how few – if any – reviews they get in magazines like Fangoria, Rue
Morgue, HorrorHound, etc. Feeling unappreciated, or even invisible, can cause
any writer to consider quitting. What’s the point of producing work if no one
gives a shit about it? I try to counter this feeling by saving some of the
positive reviews I do get by taking screenshots of them. Whenever I start to
feel like I might be invisible, I pull up a couple and remind myself that yes,
there are readers and reviewers who do see me. It helps.
·
Winning no
awards. Every award season, writers get
depressed because they’re never nominated or if nominated, never win. Often,
I’ll see writers post a sour grapes message on social media about how all
awards suck and how the specific award they weren’t nominated for sucks the most.
(But if they ever win one, they never criticize awards again.) This is Envy
rearing its toxic head again, plus, in a capitalistic society, competition is
everything. You have to have losers in order for there to be winners, and you
have to have winners otherwise how would we ever know what the hierarchy of
society is? I’ve won a few awards, and I feel honored by them all. But I also
try to remind myself that an award doesn’t mean I’m officially One of the
Greatest Writers of All Time. It simply means that a certain group of people
chose to honor certain literary works at a certain point in time. Awards are
your peers acknowledging that you do good work, and nothing more. (They don’t
need to be more; appreciation from your fellow artists is more than enough!) They
can be used for promotion, sure, but that’s a side benefit. And it’s arguable
how much help they are in promotion. As I keep saying, try to find fulfillment
in creating the writing itself and knowing that you have readers (however many)
that think you and your work are awesome.
·
Not getting TV
or movie deals. Envy again. I’ve never had a movie or
TV deal (although I’ve had some nibbles), and I do my best not to be envious
when other writers announce their deals. Again, I remind myself that the young
me would be thrilled to have the career I have now, and it helps. Besides, if I
wanted to make movies or TV shows, I would’ve gone into those fields. I want to
write fiction.
Why
Do Some Writers Quit After a Long Career?
I
think the following list is mostly self-explanatory, and most of the items are
challenges of aging in general applied to a writing career. I turned sixty this
year, and I’ve started to feel some of the issues below. I remind myself about
envy again, try to focus on what I really wanted from my career (to write and
to grow as a person and artist), and I remember the kid writer I used to be.
·
Disillusionment
with the publishing industry.
·
Seeing younger
writers having earlier and greater success than they did.
·
Their career
didn’t reach the heights they’d hoped for.
·
Fearing their
best days artistically are behind them.
·
Feeling
forgotten.
·
They’re tired.
How NOT to Quit
If you’re truly determined to quit writing, no one can
stop you. And as I said at the outset of this long entry, it’s okay if you do
want to quit. But if you’d like to keep going, here’s some advice from someone
who’s considered quitting more than once in his forty-year career.
·
Don’t let
others define your writing career.
Don’t accept anyone’s paradigm for what a writing life should be but your own.
You don’t have to make a living at it, you don’t have to be an award-winner,
you don’t have to have a zillion followers on social media, you don’t have to
write in a certain genre, etc. If you try to follow a path someone else has
laid out for you, you’ll be miserable and eventually feel like a failure.
Create and follow your own path, and you’ll be more likely to go the distance
as a writer.
·
Understand why
you write. Figuring out what you want most out
of your writing will help you achieve it (or at least work toward it). If
you’re fulfilling your artistic and personal needs, you’re less likely to quit.
·
Allow the act
of writing to be fulfilling in and of itself. I’ve mentioned this several times already, but it’s
worth mentioning one last time.
·
Accept you’re
going to feel negatively about your career from time to time. Don’t give these
feelings more power. Whenever I start to (figuratively)
hear voices telling me I’m a lousy writer, I’m a failure, I’ll never be as good
as I want to be, I remind myself that those voices lie. They’re just my doubts
and fears speaking, but what they’re telling me isn’t true. I’m more successful
at this some days than others, but it helps a lot overall.
·
Accept that
your career can never live up to the heights of your imagination, and that’s
okay. Our imaginations have no limits, but
real life does. I’d love to be ten times successful than Stephen King (or even
his rip-off doppelganger on Amazon, Stephen R. King), but that’s not realistic.
Shit, it’s not even within the realm of possibility. It’s okay to imagine more
from your career, to want more and strive for more. But don’t think you’re a
failure for only achieving what you can in the time you have in this world.
·
Avoid burnout:
Rest when you need to. Have interests aside from writing. I suck at this. I love writing and teaching writing, I
love reading, and I love movies. Primarily Horror, but I love SF/F and
mysteries, and superheroes, and interesting documentaries and nonfiction series
(not reality shows, though) as well. I’ve never understood hobbies. I
long ago figured out what I liked and I’ve devoted my entire life to it. I
haven’t experienced burnout yet, so hopefully I’ll keep going like this until I
die. But I think it’s probably healthier to take rests and have a life outside
of writing. I guess this is a “Do as I say, not as I do” piece of advice.
·
Connect with a
writing community. Having friends who understand you,
support you, and commiserate with you in ways non-writers will never be able to
is huge. It’s a vital survival tool for writers, whether your community
is in your town or online. Sadness and depression thrive on loneliness. Let
your writing brothers and sisters be there for you when you need it, and you be
there for them.
·
Try new things. Try a new genre or a different craft technique (like
writing an epistolary story or a story in second person). Write a poem or
essay. Try ghostwriting. Try anything and everything when you start to feel
like quitting. Either you’ll return to your work refreshed and ready to go, or
you may find a new kind of writing that you want to focus on for a while.
Either way, you’re less likely to stop writing altogether.
·
Try to enjoy
what your career is instead of obsessing on what it isn’t. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t continue trying to
advance your career and further your learning as an artist. But if you’re
always focused on tomorrow, you’ll miss the joys of today. And those joys are
what feed us and keep us going.
·
Give back. Volunteer for a writing organization you belong to.
Teach a writing class or workshop at a conference, your local library, or a rec
center. Mentor new writers. Giving back helps us find deeper meaning and
satisfaction in our careers, especially as we get older.
·
Focus on
living a creative life. When I was
eighteen or nineteen, I asked myself what my true goal was as a writer, and I
realized that what I wanted more than anything was to live a creative life. And
this is my ultimate weapon whenever I feel down about my writing career and
think I should probably hang it up. I wanted to live a creative life, and
that’s exactly what I have done for over four decades. I’ve succeeded at that, and
I continue to succeed every day. So what if I get a rejection, don’t win award,
don’t make a best-of list, get few reviews, no reviews, or bad reviews? I’ve
already succeeded. And you can, too.
And
if all else fails . . .
Just Keep Writing
·
Even when you
don’t feel like it, even if it’s like pulling teeth, even if you think what
you’re producing is garbage.
·
So many
problems writers face can be dealt with, one way or another, by simply engaging
in the act of writing.
·
If you want to
have a long career as a writer, and keep from quitting when the going gets
hard, focusing on producing writing is the best way to ensure you stay the
course.
So
whether you’ve quit writing and are contemplating returning to it, you’re
thinking about quitting, or if you’re concerned that some day you might suffer
burnout or disillusionment and finally throw in the towel, hopefully, I’ve
given you some ideas to – as Dory says in Finding Nemo – “Just keep
swimming, swimming, swimming.”\
That little fish is a lot smarter than she seems.
DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION
Old Monsters Never Die
Like horror? Like short stories? I got what you need!
My eighth fiction collection – Old Monsters Never Die – came out May 28
from Winding Road Stories.
From the mind of four-time Bram Stoker Award winner
Tim Waggoner comes 18 provocative tales of terror that explore the darkest
corners of the human mind. This comprehensive collection concludes with an
unforgettable metafictional story on what it takes to be a horror writer. With
this carefully curated selection of short stories. discover why no matter how
much we try, in our deepest subconscious, Old Monsters Never Die.
Available in paperback and eBook editions.
Amazon Paperback: https://tinyurl.com/59yny48s
Kindle: https://tinyurl.com/5b3etxts
B&N
Paperback: https://tinyurl.com/352a9nzx
The Atrocity Engine
The
Atrocity Engine,
first in a series of horror/urban fantasy novels for Aethon Books called The
Custodians of the Cosmos, has been getting great reviews!. The second
novel, Book of Madness, releases July 30th, and the
concluding volume, The Desolation War, comes out Oct. 30th.
The
Maintenance novels take place in the mythos I’ve been developing since my novel
The Harmony Society came out in 2003. If you want to learn more about my
mythos, you can check out this previous blog entry: https://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/2022/12/twenty-years-of-waggoner-mythos.html
(Don’t
worry, though. You can read the Maintenance novels without having read any of
my other work.)
Men
in Black
meets Hellraiser in this rollicking mash-up of urban fantasy and cosmic
horror from four-time Bram Stoker Award-Winning author Tim Waggoner.
Creatures
from dark dimensions infesting your home? Demonic beings trying to drive you
insane? Alien gods attempting to destroy your universe?
Just
call Maintenance.
This
underpaid and overworked secret organization is dedicated to battling forces
that seek to speed up Entropy and hasten the Omniverse’s inevitable death.
Neal
Hudson is a twenty-year veteran of Maintenance. A surveyor who drives through
the streets of Ash Creek, Ohio constantly scanning for the deadly energy known
as Corruption. Since the death of his previous partner, Neal prefers to work
alone, and he’s not happy when he’s assigned to mentor a rookie.
But
they better learn to get along fast.
The
Multitude, a group of godlike beings who seek to increase Entropy at every
opportunity, are creating an Atrocity Engine. This foul magical device can
destroy the Earth, and they don’t care how many innocent lives it takes to
build it. (Spoiler alert: It’s a lot!)
Just another day on the job. . .
“Waggoner offers a fresh variation on the trope of a
covert agency combating evil in his blood-drenched Custodians of the Cosmos
series opener.” – Publishers Weekly
“This gripping dark fantasy boasts an indelible cast
and an unwavering pace.” – Kirkus Reviews
"THE ATROCITY ENGINE is a wild ride full of
entertaining scenarios and scary monsters!" – Booklist
“THE ATROCITY ENGINE is a kick-ass cross-genre
thrill ride of a novel! Holy moly! Tim Waggoner is easily one of today’s best
horror writers.” – Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of CAVE 13 and
NECROTEK
"This is edge-of-your-seat Horror Fantasy. It's
as if Stephen King wrote MEN IN BLACK!" —Scott Sigler, #1 NYT Bestselling
author of EARTHCORE
“Fast-paced, cleverly thought-through, and deeply
unnerving in all the right places—urban horror fantasy with a decidedly creepy
difference. Don't read it in the dark!” – Diane Duane, New York Times
bestselling author of TALES OF THE FIVE: THE LIBRARIAN
Amazon Hardcover: https://www.amazon.com/Atrocity-Engine-Tim-Waggoner/dp/1949890899/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1699124447&sr=1-2
B&N
Hardcover:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/book/1144299910?ean=9781949890891
Lord of the Feast
My
most recent horror/dark fantasy novel for Flame Tree Press came out in April.
Twenty
years ago, the Shardlow family attempted to create their own dark god – and
they failed. Now they’re ready to try again . . .
Check
out this cool review video the good people at Flame Tree Press made for Lord
of the Feast!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-6apaQI7Rs
“Lord of
the Feast is an entertaining mix of bloody horror and honest emotion and a
welcome return to the surreal, gruesome horror hijinks that Waggoner’s longtime
fans know and love.” – Considering Stories
“Lord of the Feast is sure to
take the reader down a dark rabbit hole into a twisted wonderland filled with
characters from the darkest of nightmares and fans of dark fiction are sure to
love it.” – A Reviewer Darkly
Flame
Tree Press Paperback and eBook: https://www.flametreepublishing.com/lord-of-the-feast-isbn-9781787586369.html
Barnes & Noble Paperback: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lord-of-the-feast-tim-waggoner/1143636012?ean=9781787586369
Barnes
& Noble eBook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lord-of-the-feast-tim-waggoner/1143636012?ean=9781787586376
Audiobook Sale
Audible versions of some of my books
are on sale at Amazon until 9/16/24! You can find them here: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=tim+waggoner&i=audible&crid=2UB4IZSPVIKVW&sprefix=tim+waggoner%2Caudible%2C115&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
The books include: The Way of All
Flesh, Eat the Night, The Last Mile, Love, Madness, and Death (a novella
collection), The Winter Box (Bram Stoker Award-winner), The Men
Upstairs, (Shirley Jackson Award finalist), A Kiss of Thorns (Bram
Stoker Award finalist), and Dead Detectives Society (I have a new
Nekropolis story in this anthology).
Eat the Night features the first appearance of Maintenance, the
entropy-battling agency in The Atrocity Engine.
Teeth of the Sea eBook Sale
The Kindle version of my
creature-feature novel Teeth of the Sea is currently on sale for 99
cents! I have no idea how long the sale will last, so snag a copy before the
price goes back up.
They glide through dark waters, sleek
and silent as death itself. Ancient predators with only two desires – to feed
and reproduce. They’ve traveled to the resort island of Las Dagas to do both,
and the guests make tempting meals. The humans are on land, though, out of
reach. But the resort’s main feature is an intricate canal system . . .
. . . and it’s starting to rain.
SCHEDULED APPEARANCES
In Your Write Mind. June 27th to June 30th. Greensburg,
Pennsylvania.
IGW Genre Con. August 17th and August 18th.
Huntington, West Virginia.
Authorcon V. March 28th to March 30th.
Williamsburg, Virginia.
StokerCon. June 12th to June 15th.
Stamford, Connecticut. I’m one of the Guests of Honor!
WHERE TO FIND ME ONLINE
- Newsletter Sign-Up: https://timwaggoner.com/contact.htm
- Website: www.timwaggoner.com
- Amazon Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Tim-Waggoner/author/B001JP0XFM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true
- Blog: http://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/
- YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/timwaggonerswritinginthedark
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tim.waggoner.9
- Instagram: tim.waggoner.scribe
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