Marc Rivers, Author

  • On Setbacks

    I apologize in advance for these scattershot thoughts.

    In just a few days, I will officially be between jobs. It’s not something I envisioned for my career, but I have to move forward as best I can. For all my earlier talk of resolve, it either failed me when I needed it or else it just wasn’t enough to overcome the broader situation. It will be easy to think it was the first one, and to give up accordingly. But like I said, I have to move forward. As GLaDOS once said (or sang), “We do what we must because we can.” And so, I must find a new way to trade my time and skills for money within the framework of a capitalist society. And I need to do it especially quickly because that very capitalism acts as a gatekeeper to healthcare in this ass-backward country. We could have nice things, but NO! We had to listen to Adam Smith’s colonizer nonsense from the 18th Century and never, ever question if there was a better way to do things.

    It’s probably going to take some time and energy away from the second draft of my novel. If nothing else, it will feel harder to write creatively when I feel the burden of needing to find suitable employment looming over my head. Justified or not, that obstacle is going to be there and trying to shove it away probably won’t work very well.

    Speaking of novels, my writing group has started to give some feedback on the first few chapters of mine. It’s good to see things that others are able to observe when they haven’t been living with the story bouncing around in their head for a decade.

    Nevertheless, there is a part of me that thinks I should be cooking up some smaller writing ideas on the side. That’s not happening, though, which is irritating. I’m not entirely sure if I should actually indulge the urge to work on any side projects, and that uncertainty is its own brand of frustrating. Should I be working on more than just my novel? If so, what? Why can’t I think of anything? (Of course, the employment situation is also an unwelcome major distraction, too.)

    Some priorities are about to shift—partly because they’re being compelled to and partly because it’s the only thing that would produce the desired results anyway, external factors notwithstanding. I have in my mind a vision of what those priorities are and what it looks like when they are elevated. Now will come the test of whether or not I can actually execute that vision. In a nutshell, I just need to do better.

    I do enjoy writing, though. In fact, I think I’ve enjoyed it more these past few months than I have in a long, long time. I hope I don’t lose that momentum or that fire. I’ve seen what happens when my enthusiasm for something almost completely evaporates and if that happened to my fiction work, I’d be pretty devastated.

    To anyone reading, thanks for letting me bend your ear (as it were) as long as I have. I promise not all my updates will be this moody.

    Only tangentially related to that last paragraph, I did a Corporeal Writing prompt that asked about living “completely openly” and what it would be like to “live without walls.” It got me thinking of the walls I’ve built up in my mind to defend my ego (feelings) and how those walls have counterproductively kept me from growing. Yet to break down those walls would also mean to make myself more vulnerable to the outside world, which is not something that appeals to me. The reward? Yes. The risk? Not so much.

    So, this is an attempt at breaking down a little part of one of those many, many walls that have turned my psyche into an ADHD version of the backrooms. That’s right, if I don’t do more to fix myself now, I’ll end up just like Chiwetel Ejiofor’s character. (Whoa, hey, man! Spoilers!)

    To end this on a positive note, here’s to me (and you, and them, and us) getting better! We can do it! As the incomparable bard himself, George Michael, once said (well, sang), “I gotta have faith.”

    Take care of one another. We’re all going through it, even if “it” is different for each of us. Until next time,

    -Marc

  • World Cup Distractions

    As one might intuit from the title, I’ve been generally distracted the last few weeks by the men’s World Cup. Having played soccer in my youth (at the YMCA), I came to be a fan of the sport. It comforts my little ADHD brain to have it on, whether in the background or as a central focus. I don’t think I’m actively rooting against any particular countries in this year’s tournament (maybe a player, but not an entire team), so I should be able to enjoy the results, however they may shake out.

    Other things are distracting me, too, beside the World Cup. As my last post intimated, I’m struggling to juggle the various responsibilities that come with being an adult laboring under capitalism. (Is the World Cup adding to that struggle? Perhaps. It’s a matter for philosophers.)

    All that to say that I haven’t done as much writing lately as I’d like. I think about it quite often, but the act of sitting down and typing things out has been pushed to the side lately. It’s not a good start for my resolution to finish a chapter every two weeks, I admit. Hopefully this public self-examination will help me to refocus on my favorite hobby and not just put a game on to dull my senses for a while.

    And speaking of games, I just replayed the OG Final Fantasy VII in (very early) anticipation of next year’s release of Final Fantasy VII: Revelation. I have full confidence the game is going to kick ass (and also that it will take up what precious little space is left on our PlayStation’s hard drive).

    But while I was playing it, I got to wondering—why isn’t there a Final Fantasy tabletop roleplaying game? It seems like a bit of a no-brainer on its surface. So, I looked into it and discovered that there is, in fact, a Final Fantasy TTRPG. It’s just that it’s a TTRPG version of Final Fantasy XIV, which I’ve never played. (I simply do not have time for an MMO.) It’s also rather expensive, even by TTRPG standards, so that’s a deterrent to looking into it more. Even so, if I could get my hands on a cheaper version of the rulebook, I’d be curious enough to learn more about it.

    I’ve been trying to make more time for reading, with varying degrees of success. I’m concurrently trying to work through The Fifth Season and The Kaiju Preservation Society (two very different books in terms of tone, let me tell you). I wish reading came as naturally to me as it did back in my school days (or even when I had an office job with downtime). The only way I’ll get back into that depth of habit is by doing. I can’t sit around and wish—gotta just crack open those books and read!

    Anyway, thank you for reading through my gripe session. I’ll aim to have a more positive and interesting update in a couple of weeks. For now, I soldier on. I wish you all luck with doing the same.

    Take care of each other. Admit when you need help, then reach out for it. Show grace to one another and do what you can to be better today than you were yesterday. We’ll talk again soon.

    -Marc

  • On Resolve

    A progress update on the second draft of my novel: I’ve finished chapter 6. By my current chapter outline, I only have 19 more to go. Cue the upside-down smiley face emoji.

    The second draft is already at 28k words, so there’s probably not a very good chance that the whole thing will come in under publishers’ preferred upper limit of 120k words. I’m not envisioning a publisher taking a flier on a first-time author with a novel over the standard word count limit. It makes me worried I’ll have to split this book into two, which is a sub-optimal outcome to me.

    But before I can cross that bridge, I first need to get to it. To do that, I have to buckle down and find some resolve. And not just in the sense of making resolutions, though I’m thinking of that, too. Resolutions like:

    • Making a blog post every other week rather than every month
    • Finishing a chapter of my second draft every other week
    • Being more open about my thoughts and feelings with the people in my life
    • Being more committed to duties and responsibilities

    All these things require resolve on my part—resoluteness, having resolve, being resolute. It’s easy for me to say that I’ll do these things, even that I want to do them, but as the saying goes, “Enthusiasm is common; endurance is rare.”

    I have my own set of mental health issues. But outside of those (or, likely, exacerbated by them), I can be very defeatist at times. It makes it very difficult to establish new habits (good habits in particular) when any little setback is interpreted in my mind as complete and utter failure. It’s not a great way to live and I don’t recommend it. If anything, I recommend taking that part of your mind, giving it a name you absolutely cannot respect, and talking back to it with that name.

    For me, I can’t really take a man named Terry seriously (Pratchett and Crews being notable exceptions). So the part of my mind that’s constantly bringing me down, is named Pterry. That’s right—he spells it with a silent P. Look me in the eye and tell me that you can take anything a person named “Pterry” says seriously. You can’t! So when the defeatist part of my mind is the part that’s being the loudest, I can just say, “No one asked you, Pterry!”

    All of this is to say that my inner resolve, after so many, many years of letting Pterry do his thing without interruption, is Not Good™. And I’m in a place now where that has to change, not just if I want to accomplish goals as a writer, but if I want to continue enjoying the blessings I do have.

    I believe it’s possible. And I will be damned if I don’t try with all I’ve got (and maybe more than I thought I had).

    I’ll talk to you again soon and let you know how chapter 7 is coming along.

    -Marc

  • Blog Post Title Never Determined

    My wife and I are watching the original “12 Angry Men” and we’ve had conversations about how it could be remade and with whom. I’m personally of the opinion that it needs to be updated with women in the cast because could you imagine Jane Lynch or Toni Collette matching up against Michael B. Jordan, Tramell Tillman, or Oscar Isaac in a tense, interpersonal drama? Maybe the 2020’s remake of “12 Angry Jurors” is just another example of something that’s too awesome to exist.

    In other non-existent media, I haven’t made much progress on my novel lately. What I have done has been fruitful, at least in my estimation. A couple of scenes got shuffled around and some fat was trimmed while still keeping in some character moments.

    As the first draft was being written, I was doing quite a bit of world-building at the same time. The more I thought of interesting details, the more I wanted to find a way to include them in the narrative. Going back and reviewing them with a (slightly) more critical eye, I can see that some of the details are just narrative bloat.

    I came to the realization that I’ll always know more about my story’s setting than the reader will and I’m under no obligation to share everything I’ve thought of. For one thing, some details just aren’t actually that interesting. For another thing, unless they have an effect on the story, they become clutter or accidental red herrings.

    In the original version of my novel, at the outset of the protagonist’s journey proper, a side character warns him about the hazards of the road, including “jarnmen,” who are crazy, violent, ultranationalist raiders. I removed the only mention of them from the story because it was just that: one mention. They never appear, never affect anything from the background, and honestly, they’re not even active in the same region that the protagonist’s journey goes through.

    But just because I took the mention of them out of the narrative doesn’t mean they’re not still in the world. There’s a long segment in the middle that slows way down because I wanted to show off characters that revealed more about the wider world. That’s one of my “darlings” that I’ll have to “kill,” but the narrative will ultimately be better for it. So, even though the reader will ultimately not get to know Thegn Yngvar “the Old Aurochs” or the dusk elf scholar Melendrath and his attitudes toward the Eyldrmen’s preference for songs over written records, I’ll still know. I’ll know all of it.

    I’ve been thinking of setting a pace of finishing a chapter every couple of weeks. That sounds approachable while still giving me a schedule with tangible goals. I’m going to start with that this week and see how well I manage it.

    I’ll let you all know how I manage this new goal and how my reading goes, too. Please take care of yourselves and each other. We’ll talk again soon.

    -Marc

  • Lucky Sevens

    Greetings! It’s been a while. I’ll confess upfront that this post’s title is misleading. This just happens to be the seventh post on my author blog and I couldn’t think of anything more clever or relevant.

    I’ve barely scratched the visual art itch since I last talked to you all. I did find a bunch of Bob Ross episodes online, so at least there’s that. Life is just busy, you know? Plus, my job is the source of a lot of stress and anxiety for me right now, so it can be difficult to switch into “creative” mode at night. But rather than make excuses, I’ll try this month to make art instead.

    I said that I’ve barely scratched the visual art itch because I’ve been making modest progress on my novel. Among the accomplishments I’ve made (beyond simply hammering out words) was realizing that the first three chapters of my first draft really ought to have been five chapters. Not that I added content, mind you. No, it’s just that I had crammed too much into each chapter and they were also ending in not-at-all the right places. So I broke them up in more sensible spots and happened to end up with five reasonable chapters where once there had been three overstuffed ones. (I can already tell the current chapter I’m redrafting will need to be broken up for much the same reasons.)

    Oh, I also finished another short story, this one not set in Estéa, nor even in the fantasy genre at all. It’s called A Deal Is a Deal and you can read it here. It’s a cozy little story about one man’s long-awaited conversation with Death. Hopefully you enjoy it.

    Changing topics, I’m pretty sure one of the writing groups I belong to has withered and died. So it goes. But the other one that’s been meeting more regularly has actually expanded its schedule from once a month to twice monthly! So, huzzah. It’s the first time I’ve been part of a regular writing group, so this is an exciting development for me.

    I don’t know that I have much else to add at this time. I know that it’s been a while since my last post and I’ve made upwards of half a dozen of you wait too long for not much of an update. The next one will come sooner, I promise.

    Until then, look after one another and always say “no” to fascism in all of its many forms. (Maybe someday I’ll use this space to spill digital ink on my thoughts, as a Christian, of why Christian Nationalism is unequivocally a terrible thing and should be resisted at all costs.)

    -Marc

  • Pep Talks

    I have a question for the very few visitors I’ve received: why no comments? No emails? No questions? No LOVE?!

    I get it (a little bit). I’m not actually going anywhere and hawking a product for sale, so that certainly limits the opportunities for outside engagement. But I am checking.

    Speaking of creating a product, I am still making sad, pitiful progress on my novel so far this year. To this point, I’ve actually done more to outline the revision of a completed draft than I have to actually write said revision. It’s not all bad, though. The process has helped me better understand where to break up some of the early chapters for better pacing. (The first two chapters really needed to be three, and a couple of obvious “episode-enders” now have the chapter breaks they deserve.)

    In the meanwhile, I’ve spent some of my time by making a couple of Excel files to give myself pep talks on command. One is intended for my day job and focuses on executive function, while the other is meant for making art and focuses on reminding me not to worry about how much my art might suck.

    Now, you may be saying to yourself, “Wait, Excel? You give yourself pep talks using spreadsheet software? Recreationally?” Yes. I made a macro to randomly choose a motivational quote or pep talk from a list of options because that’s precisely the kind of nerd I am. If I knew enough programming to make a desktop app that would do the same thing, I would.

    On the topic of making art, though, I’m feeling inspired by reading “The Art of the Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien” by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull. Knowing now that Tolkien himself did artwork for Middle Earth over many years and with varying degrees of sophistication (sketches, watercolors, etc.) makes me want to stop daydreaming only about making art for my fantasy setting and actually do art.

    I’d love to be able to visually express the ruined city of Herensk, reduced to a burnt husk and turned into a dragons’ den; or the modest new capital, Thráinsgrove, situated in the shadow of the majestic mountain known as the Himmalvegur; or the quiet serenity of Kálvurstad, nestled on a scarp between the White Ridge Mountains and the Wild Weald. And that’s not even mentioning my D&D campaign settings.

    Plus, I think I’d like to be able to just say that I wanted to, so I did—that I even could. No, it doesn’t have to be great. I’m not making any plans to make a professional pivot into a concept artist. I just have an imagination and I want to be able to express it, you know?

    Maybe I’ll seek out episodes of The Joy of Painting, see if I can pick anything up from watching and listening to those. Those episodes should be available on the PBS app, right? Surely they wouldn’t be stuck behind a paywall… (Not that I intend to do oil or acrylic painting, but there are certainly principles that would carry over into digital art, one would think. And if Bob Ross of all people can’t get me to feel better about my amateurish efforts at art, then who can?)

    I’ll let you all know how that plan is working out for me—and how my novel is coming along, obviously. Be kind to one another and to yourselves. We’ll talk again soon.

    -Marc

  • 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

Designed with WordPress