Talking with a relative this week, I was reminded how easy it is to miss the small things. With all that happens in my day job and my family’s activities, it’s easy to focus on just what needs to be done. It’s easy to focus on the stress. Whether that is managing several projects in my day job, or working to write, edit, and revise my books, I find it easy to focus on tasks and goals. But at the same time, if I’m not careful, I could miss the small things going on around me.
My books are my way of relieving my stress because through those stories, I guess I come to understand what drives some people to act. I spend a lot of time writing, but in an effort not to miss the small things, I write at a desk in the same room where my kids do homework or play games. One small thing that happens at times is that my sons will sometimes add messages or notes to my page where I left off typing. See the image with this post for an example of what my son’s add like to add. The highlighted portion was their wording. I left my laptop for only a minute or two, with an open quotation mark as a character thought about saying something, only to come back and see my son’s had added their own text. After my sentence “What would she have to say that was worse than” my boys added “Im gonna take your kidney”? That would have certainly changed the tone of that story.
I’ve heard many times, that writing requires focus and a quiet place, which helps. But in that room with my kids, things stay quiet most of the time. We also laugh. Just like a good book or movie where a little comedy or laughter lightens the tension, writing in that room with my kids gives me plenty of chances for fun and laughter. That’s one of the small things I enjoy and watch for.
If, like me, you deal with a lot of work or life stress, I suggest looking for the small things. Even when we’re not looking, they still happen. Sometimes we have to really look to find them. But seeing them can lighten moods, even if only for a moment.
I’d love some more preorders of my next book, Dissonance, out as a preorder on Amazon Kindle until September 3. in that book, time travel is tearing the world apart, and only those that sense the resonance can feel the changes. It is a sequel to Resonance, which has surprised me with how many pages are read on Amazon Kindle Unlimited.
My most recent book, an epic fantasy titled, A Map, a Mage, and a Sacrifice, was a fun book to write. It is set in a world with limited technology, but where sacrifice is a necessary element to magical power. The greater the pain and suffering, the greater the magical power generated. The few mages in power use voluntary sacrifice of the citizens to generate power they use to protect and defend the empire. But their rule may be coming to a close.
If you’re looking for a science fiction story, try my book The Promise of Dust, which takes place in a cloud city floating in the atmosphere of Venus. Or Progenitor’s Legacy: Deceit, which takes place many years in the future on a tidally locked world that orbits a red dwarf and has been reached by humanity in their search for the alien progenitors who seeded the galaxy with nano machines.
If a young adult science fiction is more to your liking, check out my series This New Earth, that starts with Demons of a Dead World and Secrets of a Dead World.
If you are looking for a young adult fantasy, check out my book The Threads Unbound.
DANIEL R. BURKHARD 