Pernell Rogers – Writer

Hello all! Just want to create a quick update on what I’ve been doing the last few months. Much of my writing in the last quarter of 2020 dealt with entering small horror writing contest where I won a few and lost a few. Nevertheless, those flash fiction stories are fodder on an upcoming project. I also worked more on my novel. However, I kept coming to roadblocks, and my creativity wasn’t there, so I went in another direction for the time being.

I haven’t published any stories in a very long time, and I miss it. That’s where my new project came into being. I’m creating another collection of short supernatural stories based on some of the flash fictions stories I created for the small contests.

How is it going so far, you may ask? AWESOME! I can’t believe this, but I’m averaging 750-1000 words a day! I’ve never written so much! I took a 4 day break during Super Bowl weekend, and when I started back up, I wrote 2000+ words in a single day. The stories are flowing well and my creativity is back. I always have the novel in the back of my mind, but I really want to get the first draft of this collection completed. Right now, there is no timeline, but I hope the first draft of all the stories will be completed sometime in July… then come the multiple revisions, sending them to my editor, and making final revisions. All that takes time, so be patient.

I’ve already finished one story and working on the second. I’ll keep you updated on my progress. Thanks for checking in to see how I’m doing.

Stay safe and take care!

Hi all! I’ve started a new story after two months of racking my brain. I had to pull this story out, and there are still some fuzzy places, but it feels good to write again. This story is my first attempt at using first person, and I think that’s why it’s so hard to solidify. I run through very specific scenes in my head, but they’re not in sequence. They pop up out of nowhere, and it drives me nuts, but I’ll get a handle of it after a while.

In my last post, I mentioned the Lore podcast. What I’m discovering as I listen to his various stories is how we, as humans, fill in the blanks whenever we’re unsure, when there’s no evidence, and that’s what I did recently.

I was awakened by a rapid knock on a wall Sunday morning. I figured it was a woodpecker and stayed in bed. I heard it again, but this was much, much louder. I arose and started going around the second floor. Nothing.

Awake now, I went downstairs. While sipping coffee, I heard the rapid knocks again, and it was close. Then there was scratching and some pecking, and it came from the wall in the hallway. I placed my ear near and heard the scratching. An animal was stuck between the hallway wall and my laundry room! But what was it?

I called a company to remove it, but they couldn’t do it until Tuesday. That meant I had to live with that thing. I was unsure, so I filled in the blanks with scenarios I conjured up. Was it a bird, a roof rat, some other animal I don’t know about? How did it get in? Can it get out and enter my home? Being unsure brings out our fears, and many times moves us to react. As Sunday progressed, I could hear the thing moving toward the floor. There is a small opening in my laundry room where I almost lost my ferret one year. Could it escape and enter my home? I turned on the laundry room light and closed the door. It was trapped. Later, I saw fuzzy shadows pass in front of the light very fast. It was easy to remove some items I used to fill in the blanks. I was pretty sure it was a bird, but how big? What type of bird? A few hours later, the light in the laundry room was off, to my surprise. Did it break the bulb? The power to that light was still on. Could it spark a fire? That was on my mind as I went to bed that night. I’d filled in the blanks and examined possibilities right before sleeping.

My little story ends well. On Monday, someone came out, who had to call someone else. The three of us caught the unknown object. It was a small wren, which has skinny, sharp beaks. Somehow, it had entered my dryer vent outside and traveled down through the dryer tube until it reached the back of my dryer. Once there, it pecked a hole in the aluminum tube and started flying around my laundry room. The light was off because while flying around, and must have hit the light switch while trying to escape. It was released back into the wild, and I had to clean up my laundry room. It had knocked quite a few things over. Luckily, there wasn’t much bird poop.

I look back on that experience and watched how I filled in the blanks whenever I was unsure. Instead of exploring the possibility of the bird running into the light switch, I rushed to the conclusion that the bird somehow broke the light. I had filled in the blanks. A terrible assumption which led to me get less than 4 hours of sleep that night! It’s those fears, which may lead to unforeseen reactions, that make us human and keep us alive. Take care!

Hi all! Attached to this post is a link to a short story I wrote for a contest. I’ve used an AI-generated voice for this story as an experiment. Feel free to listen to it.

Today, I think I have the ingredients to begin another story. I believe this will be a supernatural mystery. I’m not sure how that’s going to work, and it may change once I start developing individual scenes, but it’s been about a month since I’ve written anything. However, all that time has not been wasted.

I discovered an Amazon series called Lore, and I love it. Now, I’m listening to the Lore podcasts on iHeart. Most of my stories revolve around lore, and creating lore can be difficult if it’s to be realistic, in a way. Some of the stories Aaron Manke delivers are amazing, and many have given me ideas to develop my ‘own’ lore for stories. His podcasts do the research on historical facts, and I can use those historical facts to create my ‘own’ lore for my stories. Gotta say I’m hooked on them. Check them out if you have the chance. It’s the only podcast I listen to. Take care!

Hello all! I’ve been very quiet this year, contemplating my marketing strategy for my current and future stories. There was an error in the timing of my latest release. Reviews came in much later than the publishing date, and my book didn’t get the exposure I desired. I must rethink my strategy. I discovered a website that uses AI voices to create audio from text. I used it to introduce the beginnings of my short stories, similar to Amazon’s ‘read a sample’ option. The voices still sound robotic, to me, but the inflections and voice variability are much better.

Also, Smashwords has been bought by Draft2Digital, and there is a learning curve to use it. Their website has extra capabilities that I may explore. They have the ability to create audiobooks using either AI or human narrators. I’ll play with those later.

Currently, I have no stories in my head, which feels strange. A few ideas are floating around, but nothing concrete has come forward. In the meantime, I’ve been re-editing the 11 stories I still have to publish. ProWritingAid, has included some outstanding tools in their latest release. Probably the most interesting the Inspiration option. With it, the software examines 4000 words at a time, and looks for improvements in dialogue, atmosphere, plot twists, symbolism, etc. I used it for the first time yesterday to check the atmosphere of my first mystery. Its suggestions were eye opening. Must say I was impressed.

That’s all for now. Take care!

Hello all! Yesterday, I posted a comment about the difficulty I ran into with my latest mystery. The story came to such an abrupt halt. I had to shake it off, but my mind kept returning to it when I didn’t want to think about it anymore. Other possible stories came to mind, but no matter what, my last mystery clung on for dear life.

Well, 12,000 steps later, I had an eureka moment! The only way to keep the story’s secrets concealed was to scrutinize the timeline and locations of each main character, which was quite difficult. The six timelines overlapped and collided with one another while each character’s location changed. I had to perform some mental gymnastics to separate each timeline so they fit each location, but when I fixed two timelines, the other four wouldn’t work.

After examining the relationships between the six characters, I had to make one character move to a new location much later than I’d planned. Making that single change allowed me to re-examine the timelines, and conflicts. That’s when I discovered everything else fell into place, and all the words I’d written so far didn’t have to be modified.

Personally, that’s what I find exciting about writing. I’ve hit many walls since I started creating fictional stories. It’s easier to create a monster than it is to examine the intrapersonal relationships among characters. The realism of the story lies with those characters. Take care!

Hello all! Well, it looks like I hit a sturdy brick wall upon writing my third mystery, and it’s a nasty one. The story is based around a saying I heard long ago in the show Sanford and Son. The saying is:

Momma’s baby.
Papa’s? Maybe. (Think Jerry Springer episodes)

It was a dive into the nasty side of parenthood. I spent hours of walking, fleshing out the story. I still hadn’t written the story’s first word. I developed the crime itself, followed by everything that led up to the crime, and everything my protagonist had to discover to uncover the who did it. Then came the characters, their physical and mental descriptions, along with their motivations. Hours and hours of walking and thinking.

Last week, I sat down and starting putting the story on paper, so to speak. Around 6600 words in, I was forced to stop. Somewhere during story development, I overlooked something which I only discovered after putting word to paper. It’s such a disappointment. At the moment, I don’t know if I can find a workaround, but I do have other stories ideas waiting that need to be fleshed out. Switching gears so suddenly hurts, but it’s necessary this time. Take care!

Hello all! After much thought, I decided to change the cover of ‘Starting Over’. The blue and white felt chilly to me after a while, and those stories slide more into the cozy supernatural genre, if there is such a thing. That’s why I went with a softer image. Each woman’s experience awaits them as they drift along the sea of life.

I’m also introducing my new logo! I hope my stories allow readers to escape the humdrum of daily life and fly away, even for a short time.

The bird represents you, the reader.
The stars welcome you to a new realm.
The object behind the bird can represent the moon or the sun, depending on the time of day you wish to escape.

Look for my logo and various forms of it in the future.

Take care!

Hello all! I’ve been absent from my website for a while because I needed some rest. Although I have a third mystery to start, I had to step away from writing to focus on releasing my collection. However, yesterday, I did a lot of walking envisioning the opening scene of my new mystery story. I can envision most of it in my head, but the vision remains fuzzy. It’s the dialogue within the opening circumstance that needs clarifying. More walking will be needed.

My latest collection didn’t take off as expected. The website I used to create my ebook complained about the formatting of my manuscript, and I had to make multiple adjustments. After each adjustment, the website still needed to validate my format, and that took some time. It was the first ebook I’ve published since 2019, and I’d forgotten how picky the website was, but I still love them for their distribution model.

Speaking of distribution models, I’ve been going back in forth if I should stay with Smashwords or go to Amazon KDP. With Smashwords, my books are sold at many different markets, unlike KDP where Amazon is the only place my books will reside. I have a feeling Amazon is much more familiar than Smashwords, although Smashwords makes my books available at Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, Kobo, etc.

I think for my ‘An Unexpected Evil’ series, I’ll publish it at KDP. The first ebook is already free, and so far has many downloads. The other three books will be sold at KDP. Somehow, I’ll have to bundle the first free book with the other three books that will not be free. Not sure how to work around it though.

Take care!

Hi all! My latest book is currently available at smashwords.com, but I submitted it to the site on Nov. 14th. It has yet to be accepted into their Premium Catalog where the book with be distributed to other websites such as Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, Kobo, Scribd, etc. I’ve already received 3 very positive reviews, but I’m afraid those reviews won’t be posted on the other sites because my book hasn’t been accepted into their Smashwords Premium Catalog. I’m not sure why it’s taking so long, but it has hampered this publishing cycle.

I’ll be sure to include much more time getting both reviews and submitting my stories to Smashwords for distribution. I actually lost sleep Monday morning because this delay hung in my mind. However, I accept it and will still carry forward with my publishing. I still have two more days, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed. Take Care!

Hi all! Reviews for my latest collection ‘Starting Over’ are coming in. Planned publishing date is still November 30th. This is the longest break from writing I’ve taken in a very long time, but I found a way to keep myself busy.

I finally completed the first draft of the second mystery story, and now I’m working on a third mystery story. As I mentioned before, creating mystery stories is difficult for me. There are so many twists I have to keep in mind. During the last half of September and all of October, I was able to create a mystery story from a single line: “Stephen lives in Bisbee, AZ.” From that, I added characters, events, and situations. From those 5 words, I was able to develop a complete synopsis of almost 4000 words. I still think I can add more twists, so I’m letting it simmer. Besides, I have a lot more work to do.

Marketing my collection has also occupied my time. I also decided that I needed to expand my story’s reach by placing select books at Wattpad and Inkitt. I’ll use these two alternative marketing strategies along with the others.

After watching ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ on Netflix, I’m starting to miss my supernatural stories. Periodically, I’ve been trying to develop my own lore for my stories. Stories handed down over the decades, or centuries, that wreak havoc on people today seem to be the key to developing scary stories. I’ve developed my own lore in many of my stories without realizing it. Without context, developing lore is very difficult, e.g., a speaker emits a voice from an old recording. Just thought that up while looking at one of my speakers. The story behind the voice and the speaker, their lore, needs to be explained. That’s where I run into trouble. Why is the voice present in the recording? Is the speaker the only object affected? Questions like these allow me to develop the lore around the event. BTW, I think I just gave myself an idea for another story! Take care!

Hello all! I just realized I have posted nothing in almost two months! I’ve been focusing on getting reviews for my latest collection. I’ve also started posting my free stories on Inkitt and Wattpad to get more exposure. I stumbled onto Inkitt while looking for a story to read in my downtime. I found a good one, and can’t wait until the author completes it.

The reason I have downtime is because I’m having a lot of trouble with the last chapter of my second mystery. I’ve been stuck for over a month but was able to complete 500 words yesterday. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I have troubles with endings, and this one is a doozy! Although the story wraps up the crime, a dangerous situation still exists. That’s the quandary I’m dealing with.

At the moment, I have no more stories to start. Unusual for me. However, I still have a backlog of current stories. The next story I’ll send to my editor will be the second story of my ‘An Unexpected Evil’ series. I’m excited about this series, and I don’t think the second story will disappoint. Take care!