Marc Rivers, Author

  • A Small Victory

    I’m doing better! Actually, I should probably rephrase that. I’m doing better. (The exclamation point wasn’t entirely accurate.) Support (and meds) are doing their thing, along with a committed effort to improve our sleep hygiene by waking up earlier, going to bed earlier, and getting the enervating blue light of our smartphones out of our faces earlier. I regret to report that it is, in fact, helping our physical and mental well-being.

    Also! I did put the finishing touches on Wretched Us, All In Rime, which has been published to the site and can be read here. It’s a horror short that one beta reader described as “proper creepy.” I’ve got another unrelated piece I can share soon, so do go ahead and expect that of me. Maybe now I can be free from the song “Far From the Worries of the World” playing in my head every time I think of this story. (Again, it’s a fantastic song—I just need it to not cue up in my brain like a Pavlovian reflex every time I think about this short story.)

    As far as other general writing, I belong to two local writers’ groups. One of them is very informally organized and meets once every blue moon. The other is still kind of new and figuring out what they want their focus to be. I appreciate having both of them, though. Being able to share my work and get any kind of feedback is really useful because it asks questions of my work that I wasn’t able to ask myself, mostly from being in the weeds of it for so damn long. It’s also one more way to help me stay accountable to myself and be more regular in my writing habits.

    In one of those group meetings, someone recently made the statement that “writing is lonely work.” Personally, I think that’s only half-true. The act of hammering out the words on a laptop is lonely work, but that’s only half the work. Being among other writers, soliciting feedback, giving feedback of your own, all that is the opposite of lonely work. It’s still work (especially for us sensitive introverts), but it’s also a very critical part of the writing process, or really any kind of creative endeavor. Talking about your work with others gives you the chance to evaluate it from new viewpoints. It also gives you the chance to hear ideas that you wouldn’t have come up with on your own, which opens your mind to wider imaginative vistas. And sometimes explaining your work out loud shows you how to reshape it in ways that improve it, like the creative tension you might find between successful songwriters.

    I don’t have time to dedicate to shutting myself off from the world, cueing up the extended play of the Super Metroid soundtrack (thank you, Nintendo Music app, for finally adding that), and cranking out 2,000+ words a night. I wouldn’t want to do that even if I could. I have to find writing time when and where I can. But that’s not the only way my writing “gets done.” When I incorporate that social element into it, it expands my own imagination for new stories and helps me to evaluate my existing work afresh.

    All of that is just to say, “here’s where I’m at as a writer in this moment.” I’m trying to maximize the resources I have available to me and treat this craft as something that can always be evolved and developed further. It brings me genuine joy to be able to put the finishing touches on a story, so the more often I can do that and the better I can feel about the quality of what I create, the better.

    Enjoy the short story. Keep making art, even when capitalism tells you that you shouldn’t. Oppose fascism whenever and wherever you can. And be kind to each other. We’ll talk again soon.

    -Marc

  • I Blame My Neurotransmitters

    I had hoped to post another short story by now, but instead I’ve been pushing through a particularly bad episode of depression. I’m doing what I can to stay ahead of it with medication and therapy. And I’ve had talks with loved ones about it.

    Would that it wasn’t the case, but mental health is a big, unavoidable part of daily life. I envy those with the privilege of not having to worry about it, but I suppose this is my trade-off for having better physical health than I deserve. As much as I’d love the option of simply not being depressed, I am, in spite of the many good things in my life.

    So, as they like to say, “The horrors persist, but so do I!”

    As of March 15, I’m close to finishing the second draft of Wretched Us, All In Rime and polishing it for publication to this site. I’m not even making major revisions; I’m just fighting through the aforementioned depression and trying to keep pets fed. And running a homebrew D&D campaign. And it’s the busiest season of the year at my job. Then there’s, you know, the news… So, really, it’s just a matter of making time to write (because finding it is a fool’s errand when life has an infinite variety of methods to get in the way).

    The other things taking up my time and attention at the moment are an impending trip back to my ancestral homeland (Louisville) to celebrate my dad becoming an octogenarian, the upcoming NCAA basketball tournaments (go Cards!), and the fact that we’re trying to be stricter about our sleep hygiene so we’re not so damn tired all the time.

    My wife and I are also watching our way through Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, we just binged our way through Schmigadoon! (would have loved to see more seasons of that show), and we rewatched Sinners in theaters. Holy crap, that’s an amazing movie. I haven’t seen some of the other Oscar contenders, but I have a VERY hard time imagining they were superior films to Sinners. As I write this, it’s in the process of not winning enough Oscars, for reasons we can only suspect are related to racism.

    Anyway, I’m off to remember how to hope. Wish me luck!

    -Marc

  • The February Blahs

    It’s mid-February and I’d wanted to have “Wretched Us, All In Rime” ready to publish to this site … but I didn’t. I probably would’ve had a blog post much earlier in the month, except for the fact that I didn’t want to make a second consecutive update of “hey, that story I mentioned last time still isn’t done.” Oh, well. At least I’m not Martin or Rothfuss (yet).

    That said, I have been fighting off some notable depression recently. It’s better as I write this, but it’s really, really tough to sit down and make art when you’re overwhelmed with a feeling that it’s all pointless. Some of that is external. It feels like too fine of a line (if there even is one) between staying up-to-date on current events and doomscrolling the news and social media like Denethor with the Palantír. (For those of you who’ve only seen the Lord of the Rings movies, ask your book friends about that plot point.)

    I’m also a little bit worried that, even three posts in, I’m already at the point where I don’t really know what to say in these updates. I feel like this is a space for me to share more long-form thoughts, but I can only think of so many different ways to say, “Yep, I still have ADHD, I still hate generative AI, and I still haven’t finished that thing I started.” My hope was that having an audience (however small) would help me to stay accountable. I suppose it has, to some small degree. Maybe I just need to keep trending in this direction.

    That said, I have been keeping track of my writing output for the last little while and I can happily report that as of February 1, I’m already about halfway to the word count that I managed for all of last year! Make whatever determinations you want to about last year’s productivity (you probably won’t be wrong), but it’s a win and I’m going to be happy about it, dammit!

    I am feeling inspired to finish “Wretched Us, All In Rime” for two reasons. One, I told you I would. It’d be nice to fulfill that promise. Second, every time I think about the story, I think about the song that partly inspired it (or at least its title), and I’d frankly like to be free of it for a change. Don’t get me wrong, Týr is probably my favorite band these days, and “Far from the Worries of the World” is a banger (especially its guitar solos), but it’s just been stuck in my head for SO. LONG. I yearn for release! I need to be gripped by something else for a change.

    Other than all that, I got sucked back into Skyrim. (How? Who the hell knows.) My wife and I are finally reading through “Dungeon Crawler Carl” and I’ve separately started “A Flame In the North” by Lilith Saintcrow. Maybe someday I’ll even get around to finishing “The Fifth Season” by N.K. Jemisin. Maybe. I keep telling myself I will, anyway.

    Until next month, stay safe, keep reading, and don’t let fascism win!

    -Marc

  • New Year, Same Me (But Better)

    We’re nearly two weeks into January and it already feels too late to wish everyone a happy 2026. Would that the news could be less awful, but here we are… That’s not an excuse for me to give in to my more despondent instincts, however. I have goals for this coming year, and I intend to strive for them.

    I won’t say it’s a “new me” for the new year because there are a lot of decades of ingrained habits that can’t be overcome that quickly. My therapist and I have tried. BUT! That doesn’t mean I can’t become an improved version of myself over the next cycle of the seasons.

    The first goal is to do more reading. I know it seems silly to hear an author admit to not doing as much reading as they’d like, but I truly have fallen out of the habit like I used to do it. That’s something I aim to remedy moving forward.

    That includes various fiction works, whether they’ve been paused for a while or not. It’s not like my to-read list ever gets any shorter, so I might as well start trying to chip away at it. But it also includes some writing craft books, non-fiction (particularly related to mythology), and some anti-fascism and anti-tyranny non-fiction, just because I’m apparently not allowed to keep myself in a good mood. I’ll try to remember to let you all know how it goes.

    Another goal of mine is to be more consistent about writing, and that starts with my drafting practices. I’m very guilty of trying to make a perfect first draft, which is always a fool’s errand. So, my resolution is to be more willing to put out crap if it means just having something written down. It can be polished later, but I can’t refine a nonexistent draft of a story about a woman with amnesia who finds herself thrust into a conflict against a cult worshipping a newly appeared demon whose presence stirs her memories unless I put something—anything—down on paper (you know, figuratively).

    Another goal of mine for the upcoming year is to shop a short story to publishers. I mean really, properly, earnestly try to sell this story. It’s not one that’s available on the site. My understanding from trying this sort of thing before is that publishers aren’t interested in works that have been published online previously.

    Admittedly, everything I hear about the publishing world intimidates me. I’m not an outwardly ambitious person, so the effort required to play the game is something that still feels beyond me. I guess this coming year will teach me just how much chutzpah I can summon when needed.

    With that established, there are a couple of small projects I’m working on at the moment and which I do plan to make available here. The first is a horror short about sailors who venture too far into the waters of frost giant territory, only to find that something else terrifying also lives there. The other is a contemporary short story about a man who lives on borrowed time thanks to a deal with Death and knows that the end is coming soon. The hope was to have the fantasy short (Wretched Us, All In Rime) ready for this month’s post, but alas, it’s not quite there. I do have a finished first draft, though, so that’s something to be proud of, by my standards, at least.

    That’s it for now. Stay safe out there and help one another out. We’re only getting out of this madness if we all look out for each other. Fear and despair are powerful weapons, but remember that those who employ those weapons are also governed by the same. They only want to make us afraid of each other because they’re afraid of us. See you next month!

    – Marc

  • Naissance

    Greetings! This is the beginning of my author platform, where I plan to post various short works of fiction and, perhaps someday, shill an actual published novel. Wouldn’t that be something?

    By way of introduction, my name is Marc Rivers and I live in the Portland, Oregon area in the United States. I primarily like to write fantasy fiction, the bulk of which is set in my own world of Estéa. It’s so far tended to be in the vein of heroic adventure fantasy, but I like to try weird and dark fantasy themes sometimes, too.

    My hope for this site is to be a place where I can not only put some of my work out into the world, but also keep myself accountable to keep writing when life tries to get in the way. This is a hobby of mine I’ve been doing since I was a young lad, and like many authors, I have a dream of one day being able to walk into a bookstore and seeing my own work available for sale on the shelf. I don’t need to be the next George R. R. Martin or Brandon Sanderson; I just want to know that the work I put in amounted to something people appreciated. (That said, if there are any coked-out TV or movie producers out there that want to pay me a million dollars to adapt any of my work, I am very available for that conversation.)

    Outside of working full-time and writing, I like to spend a lot of time with my wife, our two cats (Fafnir and Cindy Clawford), and our dog (Trixie). We watch TV or movies, play board games or TTRPGs, or find places to take relaxing walks and hikes. In my own time, you can probably find me watching sports (especially rooting for my Louisville Cardinals and a variety of pro teams across multiple leagues) or playing video games. I also have at least a passing interest in (read: have sunk money into) woodworking, painting miniatures for D&D, and developing drawing skills. Making time for reading is always on the list of things to do and one of these days I’ll get better about it.

    I’m perpetually working on my first novel, titled Songs of the Eyldrmen, a story about a proud people brought low by tyrannical and nigh-unkillable dragons, until one young man discovers their secret vulnerability and has to undertake a journey to find more weapons with the same special metal or else find a way to make more of them. Along the way, he comes to realize that the heroes in his people’s songs did not have it easy and that ascending to such a stature isn’t such an enviable pursuit after all.

    Thanks for reading! We’ll talk again soon.

    -Marc

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