Tenacity is the key to the submission process. The publishing world is fairly small and is slowly being eaten away by changes in commerce and technology. Even with the advent of e-books, real books prevail to some extent. Traction is hard to come by in self-publishing. One of the problems I have faced is my books in print were previous published making them reprints more or less. Throughout the years, I have continued to push forward with submissions in hopes of a breakthroug

In 2017, I took over all my past projects. The first I released was Anarchy - Strange Tales of Outsiders, on Friday the 13th, in January of that year. The book spans the earliest beginnings of my work, Where the Road Roams (2009), to the more recent, The Carny Cage (2017), and marked the start of my website and other DS releases that followed. Anarchy is fitting turn on my writing journey. It took me a long time to figure out my genre. My books were hard to peg with horror, w

I came up with the idea for The Carny Cage while I was on the road working a gig at the St Paul Rodeo in Oregon. On break, I had lunch at the carnival. People watching is always a good way to understand characters. Most carnies seem a little rough and a prison story made sense to me. I liked the idea of the spinning cage and the chaos inside Dirk’s head. When I was a teenager, I entertained the idea of running off with the carnival. I went so far as to talk to a owner of one

Writing is a journey that never ends. I know that some of you are curious as to my next projects. My, based on true events, teenage trilogy, Rebel’s Edge, is complete and I have been in the process of submitting to open publishers and agents. So far I have nine unresolved status’ of seventeen entries. The eight rejections have ranged from the standard form letters and personal encouragement to the humorous of having no interest in the punk generation. I will keep them in flow

In 1998, I was visiting San Francisco and exploring the Castro District. It was gentrifying some at that time, but the neighborhood still held its gay charm. I have always been drawn to the dark side of things and in the shadows of the enclave of the BART train station I found an angry piece of graffiti. Spray-painted on the wall in blood red was the inscription, “Burn the AZT Death Tarp!” Twenty-one years ago the epidemic was just being slowed with the advance of new drugs,

Some of my characters are lost and are looking for signs: a symbol, a person, or a supernatural time where the stars align and create a moment of transcendence. Rarely, does change come, at least not all at once, and if it does it may not last. The hurt and despair of the damned flows through them, shaking their world and forcing their decisions with the hope of a better future or a better self. The urge to escape their captors, real or imagined, drives them to quest as they

Doubt is the mind killer just like its cousin, fear. In the past, I hated the idea of someone judging my writing. The flaws stuck out and tormented me. There was no way it could be as good as others’ work, or so I thought. I always saw images in my head like a film playing out behind my eyeballs. I used to want to make movies. I quickly learned that I did not have the resources (money and equipment) to make the desire a reality. I put it all away and life went on until an opp

Time passes so fast in its fleeting ways. It is the reason I only write for this blog once a month. Other commitments always pull and tear at time. I have quite a few posts now waiting to be discovered on this site, which is finally coalescing after trial and error as Punk Fiction. I feel my writing has a foundation with my first wave of books and an identity now that I have named it. In the spirit of these thoughts, I am proud to reach another milestone. This year, 2019, mar

I am coming to the end of the first wave of my writing. Fifteen years ago I started with screenplays, first for a short film, Spike. The finished project did not have the budget for the shadow people and was definitely on the fly. I wanted to follow it up with a Warhol style short that is now lost to time. I kept writing and dove into a feature screenplay, Tracer, about growing up as a punk. Looking back, it was rough but had moments. I remember seeing the film Tarnation and

Life is in constant flux. Right now I am writing the final part of my Rebel’s Edge series, Over the Edge. I started on it right after finishing the second one last summer and, with work and other commitments, it has taken longer than I had originally planned. The important thing is that it is almost done and will mark an end to a period of my writing that started ten years ago with Where the Road Roams. My first wave of books on my own imprint, DS, was released in 2017. I am