Pernell Rogers – Writer

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Hi all! I’ve been concentrating on my mystery stories recently. My first mystery has been through 3 beta readers, and in March, I’m sending it to my editor. I’ve also sent my second mystery to one of the beta readers who gave my some awesome insight. I’ve had other editors tell me same thing when it comes to specific scenes I tend to gloss over.

I’ve been studying why I unknowingly do this, and I think I’ve found the reason. Those scenes tend to be toward the end of the story, when I’m ready to wrap it up. I’m rushing. But when they occur in the beginning or middle of the story, I’ve discovered those scenes tend to be very emotional, forcing me to get very deep into the psyche of that character. I’ve actually experienced some of those emotions, and must admit, I don’t like tears flowing while I type. First, I can’t see a damn thing through that water! Second, those emotions hurt me, physically, even if they belong to my characters. Often, I take long breaks after such scenes to rediscover myself. If you’ve read any of my early work, you already know that some of my characters are not quite right in the head (LOL!). It’s necessary for me to place them at a distance. Well, I guess that’s all for now.

Take care!

Hi all! It’s been a busy 2nd half of the year. I finally regained access my Facebook account and fixed my Amazon KDP account. With those two methods of communication fixed, I’ve already sent and received my first mystery story from beta readers. Just recently, I’ve sent my second mystery to a beta reader.

This is my first time using beta readers, and I wish I would have used them in my earlier writing. All of them found items I often overlooked, and by bringing them back into focus, I can use the tools I already have. One comment that really hit was that I was telling instead of showing. The particular phrase the beta reader referred to ‘having a confused expression.’ It does sound okay, but there is a way to show confusion. The best tool I have for this task it the Emotion Thesaurus I purchased a while back. I’d forgotten all about, but now, I keep it open constantly.

I’m still getting used to working with Draft2Digital. They do have nice offerings, but there is a learning curve. It shouldn’t take me long to get used to it. I guess that’s all for now. Take care!

Hi all! I was forced to take a hiatus when my email provider suddenly switched. In doing so, I lost access to my Facebook accounts. And of course, that took place right before my birthday. I haven’t created a new Facebook account yet, because I’m trying to discover how I want to present myself for a second time. (Update: Looks like I’m permanently locked out of Facebook).

However, I’ve been busy. The story I was developing previously fell apart. The timing of the events could not match. Therefore, that story is on the back burner. Instead, I’ve just completed the first draft of my fourth mystery. I always try to stop writing for a while, but boredom forces me to create more stories.

And that’s the reason for this post. I’ve been going on for a long time about publishing the many stories I’ve developed. It seems like forever to me! But, I just sent one of those stories to my editor yesterday. My hope is to send her a story every other month, but it also depends on my editor’s schedule. As each story comes back from my editor, I can go through it a final time, then plan my marketing approach. I’ll need to get some reviews, which takes time, so I’m hoping to publish by early next year, unless something wonderful happens, and I can publish later this year. It’s time to empty my chest of stories. 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!