Uncategorized – Sam Stark

Moving to Patreon

Hello there. I have a lot of things going on and not a lot of time to be updating four different blogs. Therefore, I am moving my updates to my Patreon, as I am much better at posting over there.

I’m going to keep things like book reviews and convention shenanigans here, but if you would like to hear my rants about silly things like video games and my pets, head over to https://www.patreon.com/Sam_Stark where I faithfully update every Tuesday.

Also, just a quick note: you don’t have to pay to see them. I have them open to everyone.

Thanks so much!

“It’s so long since I’ve had sex, I’ve forgotten who ties up whom.” —Joan Rivers

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I’m writing sex again.

It’s been ten-thousand years.

It’s like riding a bike, not going to lie. Writing across several genres (romance, fantasy, horror) I’ve come to recognize the stuff that’s easy to fall back into and what’s a struggle, and sex is the easiest. I fall into that shit like it’s a Posturepedic.

My weaknesses are many. I mean I’m pretty shit at a lot of stuff but mostly intros and first lines. I work into things slowly and I always get “you need to get to the tension/action faster” in critiques. I think that’s the horror writer in me. Sucks that every story in every genre has to have a first line and an intro haha. Also grammar? Punctuation? Yeah, not my thing. But at least there are editors for those.

But anyway, I was talking about sex scenes. I like them. I like writing them. I like reading them a lot. I also like to read and write fight scenes, and I think the creation of the two share the same part of my brain. Both involve more than one person (yes I understand there are solo sexual situations bear with me) and both are intensely physical. Both acts are shaped by the individual skill level of the participants, be they skilled or no; experienced or no. And, most importantly, in both situations, if the encounter is fueled by emotion you can dial everything up to 12.

I love it when the emotions are high. It doesn’t even need to be a sexy thing or during a fight. I’m reading this book now, Hush by Tal Bauer, and yes there’s sex and yes there’s a lot of romance but there’s also this courtroom/political thing involving presidential assassins and Russia and it all kind of hinges on the main character struggling with his identity and coming out as gay and there’s just so many feelings gaahhhh. It’s so intense. ~~Also Joel Leslie is a god of audiobook narrating fuuuck me.~~

Moving on, there is no point to this post. I just wanted to gush about how much I missed writing sex and how happy I am to be doing it again. It’s nice to be writing something that’s not killing my brain or making me want to tear out my hair in frustration.

Hopefully you all are not killing your brains or wanting to tear your hair out. Love your pets! Have a great rest of your week!

“For Every Job That Must Be Done, There Is An Element Of Fun” – Mary Poppins

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I haven’t been keeping up to date on this blog, and I really should be because a lot has happened the last month.

First, I finished my novel. My dumb apocalypse adventure with land pirates, cute gay boys, and a dash of zombies. I’m not super happy with how it turned out, but I am happy that I finished it. Sometimes just finishing something is good. It felt great for about an hour and a half but then I was staring into the big black void of having nothing to work on and started freaking out. (That is complete bullshit by the way, I have a million things I could be working on. I was just having a very silly existential crisis.) Luckily one of my writing friends got back to me already with her very spot on critique and I have plenty to think about again. (I’m obviously not happy unless I have a bunch of shit in my head.) All her points were things I was already uneasy about, so at least there’s that. And the bones of the story seem to work. Hooray. I’ll let everything marinate for a few days and then get back to it. Try and work some new things in there and cut out all the broken stuff. It’ll be done someday. I swear.

Second, I landed another audition!

Hold on, back up. So when I auditioned that first time, I auditioned for seven different things. I got the erotic novel like I said in my previous post, but thought I bombed the rest because none of the others got back to me. Well it just took a while because the one I really wanted responded! And it’s actually an author from around here! The book is an urban fantasy about these people that go around breaking hexes. What I read for the audition was funny and sounded really fun. (Also it’s published through an actual publisher and has actually been edited, so that’s nice.)

So, long story long as usual, husband’s clothes are all in plastic containers around the room because the closet is now my studio. I bought a nice stool and hung blankets on the wall and inside the doors. I already had a good mic and I just use Audacity for the recording software since it’s a free download. I spend a couple hours a day reading things, and then try and find another five or six hours to do editing.

Seriously, fuck editing.

But for real, it’s super fun. I’m actually doing the two things I’ve always dreamed of doing professionally: writing and voice acting. It’s surreal. Hopefully, once I get a few novels under my belt I can start auditioning for bigger titles. I’m still not sure how a lot of it works, but I’ll figure it out. I’ll get there.

I see fortune and glory on the horizon, kids. Not even joking.

I hope everyone is doing okay. We live in strange times but we will get through it. And hey, if we’re still quarantining in six months you can download me reading about billionaires getting with cute yoga instructors or magic police chasing around dudes using illegal hexes. I mean, why not?

Oh, before I go, I’m starting this thing where at the end of my posts I recommend some stuff. Here it goes.

“Virgin River” on Netflix. It looks like your average run-of-the-mill cutesy romance about a city girl coming to a small town and falling for the bartender, (and well, yeah it’s that too) but there is some heavy shit going on in this show. It still has a few of the tropes that annoy me about straight romance, but the issues they deal with need to be utilized more. Also, the characters are pretty likable at about episode three.

I started reading the “Tyack & Frayne” series. It’s a bunch of novella length books set in Cornwall, England. It’s just a bunch of cozy mysteries with a touch of the supernatural centering around Frayne, who’s a copper, and Tyack, who’s a psychic. They solve crimes together and fall in love and it’s wonderful. The book I’m on now they just got married.

“Tenet” comes to DVD on December 15th. Watch that shit. Just fucking do it.

Well, that’s all I think. I’ll leave you now to go watch and read good shit. As usual, pet your pets, be nice to people, and for the love of god wear a mask.

Have a good one!

“What sense I had just took her panties off and laid down in front of him.” ― Tiffany Reisz, Submit to Desire

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I tried to find the silliest quote for the title of this entry, and well… there you go. You may be wondering why I have a quote from an erotic novel as my title, so let me explain:

I am now in talks for a contract to narrate an erotic novel. Yup.

Last week I decided to find out how audiobook narrators found jobs and stumbled across a site where you can make a profile and put up voice samples and search books looking for narrators. I did some research to see if the site was legit and the internet was basically in agreement that it was, so I went for it.

I found a couple of my favorite narrators and modeled my profile after theirs, then hit up my brother in law to see if I could use his studio. My bro in law is a musician and choral director and he runs a business recording and mixing audio for the schools in the area so kids can still have their music education during the pandemic. It’s pretty awesome. Anyway, his studio is cool, it’s just in his house, so I went over and recorded some samples and a few auditions for some books. It took about four hours, which really isn’t that bad considering I’ve done eight to ten hour stretches in a studio back when I was doing music.

Long story long, I uploaded my samples to my profile and submitted my auditions. I didn’t think anything would come from it actually, I just wanted to get myself out there.

But then Tuesday morning I had an offer for an audition. Not one I had submitted for, but someone random coming to me. They had listened to my samples and wanted to offer me a chance to audition for their book. It’s a psychology book about anxiety in relationships. So of course I said hell yeah and got the info.

BUT THEN I got an email responding to one of my auditions! I got the job! They are interested! Yessss!

Quick note: it was the only erotic novel in the stack of auditions. I mean, of course it was.

I don’t feel weird about it, it’s acting. It’s a job. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I need to build up a portfolio and romance is probably the way to do it quickly so…

I’m super excited. I’ll post the details once everything is done. Maybe link some stuff and you can check it out if you want. Or not because would that be weird? Meh, whatever.

I hope everyone has a good holiday. I’m not real big into Thanksgiving, considering the history and all, but I do like food? I also don’t really like Christmas but oh well. I will just concentrate on narrating and finishing this YA novel and not gaining 20lbs before the end of the year.

Peace out. Pet your pets. Have a good one.

“I have never met a vampire personally, but I don’t know what might happen tomorrow.” – Béla Lugosi

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I’ve been having some nerdy thoughts about supernatural lore. (Not the tv show, otherwise I would have capitalized it, obviously.) Well, now that I think about it Supernatural would be included, but it’s not what I’m focusing on. I’m thinking more generalized lore.

Let me preface this with a little backstory: I’ve been reading a lot (please read that as “shit ton”) of urban fantasy lately, which I admit goes a little off brand for me as I kind of hate most of the UF out there. I hate a lot of the tropes – i.e. the young and gorgeous heroin doesn’t have any self worth until she finds her true love because self worth is apparently wrapped up in how the boy sees her, OR the young and beautiful hero/heroin is special and the only one in the universe that can save the world and that somehow makes them a total twat about everything. The wining, winging, complaining, and crippling self-doubt finally turns them into a big enough asshole that I don’t want to read the rest of the story. Let it all burn because I just want the protagonist to die is not a great feeling to have three quarters of the way through a book.

However, there is a contingent of UF out in the universe that is just. fucking. great. I’ve noticed that it’s mostly queer, and that’s cool, sort of weird that’s a correlation but whatever. UF usually has amazing universes and some have really cool plot devices, so if the characters are cool, the books/series/show is usually cool too.

I fell down a deep, dark werewolf/shifter hole last month and couldn’t climb out for a few weeks. Werewolf stuff is pretty cool because there’s so much going on with pack and smell and bonds so there’s a lot of stuff you can do with miscommunication. Found family stories and stories with strong familial bonds are my jam anyway. Straight dudes rubbing up on other straight dudes because they’re basically canines is also my jam too but I digress.

So, I’ve been thinking about supernatural creatures with regenerative properties verses healing properties. I noticed in all the werewolf and shifter stories I read, the werewolves get injured like shot or stabbed or whatever, and unless the wound was inflicted by something silver, they heal over, gone without a trace. This is the same for all the vampire stuff I’ve seen too, wounds heal and disappear like there was never anything there.

Vampires I can understand. They’re kind of demonic I guess? Undead in their own special way? Or something? So I assume complete regeneration would be in the cards for them. (I’m not going to think too hard because there’s zombies and revenants and other undead things that are reanimated and they don’t heal – omg my brain.)

But werewolves and shifters are interesting. Do they regenerate? Or are they super healing? I guess it depends on the lore. Are they basically humans sharing a body with an animal soul? Or is it more curse/magic based and they, like vampires, regenerate?

I think this all kicked off when I was thinking about if a werewolf could get a tattoo. Would the body regen to the point where it pushed the ink out? Or would they just super heal as the tattoo was being drawn? (Man, wouldn’t that be awesome?)

I probably need to make the differences clear. Regeneration is when the wound or injury would reverse. Like it would go back in time or un-injure. A knife wound would close backwards, leaving no marks because the skin and tissue completely regenerates. All cells and blood and everything is restored. Supernatural healing is pretty self explanatory: the would heals haha. Everything works the same as it would with a regular human, it’s just sped up. The tissue and muscle and all that would knit back together and it would leave a mark/scar. And it would be tender for a while.

Now, why do werewolves and shifters heal without a trace in most media? To me it doesn’t seem right that they regenerate, since I don’t feel like shifters are in the same supernatural category as a vampire. Shouldn’t they have super healing? Shouldn’t shifters and werewolves heal real fast and then be left with a badass scar? Why isn’t this a thing? Is it a thing? Why isn’t this a thing more often?

I think werewolves should have scars and tattoos. Is that just me?

Hope everyone is having a w o n d e r f u l election season. Pet your animals, love your family and friends unless they’re terrible assholes, then love them anyway but stay away from them. Be kind. Have a good week.

I Tried To Take One Day At A Time, But Several Days Have Attacked Me At Once

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Hello again folks. I hope everyone is having a safe summer. I hope no one is going mad, stuck in their houses with their children for months on end. I hope everyone is finding something to do that’s calming, or soothing, or at least distracting. Because holy cow, I am going pretty stir crazy.

I have been doing some fun projects though. I bought a few bird feeders and placed them in various spots in the front and back yard. I made sure to get different kinds too, so we have food for the bigger birds like the blue-jays, robins, and woodpeckers, not just the peep peep birds. (I know they’re called finches but “peep peep” sounds better when you have a three year old.) We even leave out a pile of peanuts in the shells for the crows. It’s a goddamn menagerie up in here now.

I’ve also been trying some new cooking things. I’m experimenting with different kinds of flour, or no flour, or using oats instead–that turned out pretty good actually. My daughter and I went by the Asian market and bought some ingredients for Korean foods like Tteobokki which is a spicy stir-fried rice cake. Super good if you eat it in ramen with sausages and lots of veggies. Oh, and I’ve decided that I’m eating sandwiches for breakfast until I’m old and all my teeth fall out. Sandwiches are the best and are especially good if they are the first thing you get to eat in the morning. (Also you can stay pretty low-cal if you get a good wheat bread and go easy on the mayo.)

There have also been some drawing and painting projects I’ve gotten myself into, but by far the coolest thing I’ve started is knitting. I taught myself how to do it last week by watching 8,000 hours of YouTube how-to’s. I bought a huge thing of cheap yarn and just went for it. Super hard at first, but after a while your fingers sort of get the idea. Funny story though: you have to look at your hands when you’re knitting, so when I tried to find something to watch while I did it, I got frustrated because everything–and I mean everything–in all my queues is foreign. As in subtitled. And since I refuse to listen to the atrocity that is English dubs, I didn’t actually have anything to watch. I know, I know, first world problem, but it was still annoying. I thought about just listening to a few audio books (started the Cartographer series by AC Cobble. Not bad, fantasy murder mystery with horror elements + steampunk) but I was set on having a show going while I worked. So I ended up marathoning Hannibal for the fourth time because it’s available on Netflix and I’m a sucker for Hugh Dancy’s ability to look like a kicked puppy and a lumberjack porn star at the same time. Also the crime scenes in that show are so over the top it’s great.

So there it is. Some knitting. I took that picture a few days in so that piece is longer now and sports a few holes where I fucked it up, but hey, progress.

As for writing, it’s going kind of slow. Not a lot of motivation. I’ve written a few short things, and re-worked some of the novel re-write (God that is starting to piss me off) but not much to report. However, I am headed to Port Townsend this weekend for a few days of relaxation alone in an inn by the water. I’m hoping the peace and quiet will get some things in my brain moving. And if not, at least I will be able to recharge my batteries.

I hope everyone is doing well, staying safe and healthy, loving their pets, and finding some creative outlets for whatever you might be going through. Have a great weekend, and I will update again soon!

I’m Trash Because I Love Hunky, Man-Chest Book Covers

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I published a book.

I mean, yes, it’s a book but it’s more a novella. It’s a fun little story I wrote for shits and giggles about two dirty-mouthed pirates that fall in love with each other over food. A reader of mine was kind enough to offer their editing services and the niece of one of my writing group pals is a artist/designer. Long story short: I received free editing and free cover art for the book and I am beyond grateful. I don’t know what I would have done without them. (Actually I do: I would have had a stock image cover and a bunch of typos. The end.)

It’s doing fairly well. I didn’t expect much from it, but it’s been steadily making money and the little line graph thing in the sales section of Kindle Publishing is headed in an upward slant, not a downward, so I guess that’s not bad for my first try.

All that is making me excited for the book I’m writing now. It’s a mashup of romance, super heroes, and a little body horror because I’m weird.

But hey, back to the first book. I had a time trying to figure out what I wanted on the cover. I searched the top 100 Gay Romance novels on Amazon, but that was kind of boring, so I searched “gay romance covers” on Google and that got some pretty amazing results. This one is my favorite:

It’s just fantastic. I’m going to read the shit out of this book when it arrives (yes I bought it).

There’s also this one.

Please go to the Goodreads page and check out the synopsis. If you’re not dying to read this book after that, friendship with me is off the table.

Besides the book–sorry, novella–publishing stuff, things have been kind of weird. If you haven’t heard, there’s this virus going around. It’s in the news and stuff, you probably heard about it, I don’t know. I live about 15 minutes north of Seattle, so I’m a stone’s throw from one of the two American hot spots. I haven’t actually seen any of the stuff they’ve been reporting on the news, like hospitals overcrowding or riots in grocery stores, but I can tell you that traffic is really, really good. In Seattle. In the middle of the day. It’s insane.

Oh, update on my last post: My daughter is doing well, back to using her keyboard so she’s playing lots of video games during this pandemic. The skin is red and strange-looking but healing, which is the most important thing. Jokes about alien skin or attacks from acid dragons are in the near future, I’m sure.

I hope everyone is safe and healthy and getting all the things they need and are not hoarding toilet paper or sanitizer like assholes because that’s selfish and stupid. Just saying.

Pet your pets and take care of yourselves! Have a good one!

New Blog and New Beginnings

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Hello, this is my new blog. I had to trash the old one because it wouldn’t connect to my Gravatar. I would like or comment on someone else’s blog and my avatar would show up but if one were to go to my profile and click on the blog site, it would take you to Internet Nowhere.

Stupid.

So here’s the new blog. I exported my last few posts and added them here at the beginning, but only a few. Most of my last blog was crap anyway. Time to get serious. I will keep trying to update this one on a regular basis, bi-monthly probably. Not too much because writing a novel requires that I, well, write it.

Speaking of, I’m wasting time. I’m going to go work.

Backlog Post #1

Uncategorized, writing

Originally Posted 06/09/2019

I always start these things with something about not updating in a while and how sorry I am, but I’m skipping that part this time. I am not sorry for not updating since December because I’ve had a hell of a couple months (well, actually five, and that’s like half a year almost? jeez).

Norwest Con was pretty amazing–and awful at the same time. I’ll talk about the amazing parts because the bad parts have nothing to do with writing and I want to talk about writing.

The Norwest Con workshop was one of the best things I have ever done for myself. It was enlightening, inspirational, helpful, motivating, and everything else I could have ever wanted. Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld Magazine was my group’s clinician, and besides being the most precious cinnamon roll on the planet, he was a bubbling fountain of useful information about the publishing industry. I am and will forever be so grateful for his help and advice. The other thing that made this workshop so amazing was the fact that my group got along so well! We like each other so much, and appreciate each others writing and critique so much that we formed our own writer’s group that meets once a month. It’s so so so so amazing because, for the first time, I feel like I’m actually getting real feedback. REAL and HELPFUL feedback from writers I respect and admire–and that, I kid you not, is like finding treasure. Holy shit good writing groups are so hard to find. (More on that in the next post.)

Besides the workshop, I also got to participate in a couple of really good writing classes. At first, I felt like I didn’t need them because they were for things like plot structure and character building, and I feel pretty solid in those two things, but oh ho ho. I am a fledgling writer with delusions of grandeur and am very nieve about a lot of things. Never turn down the opportunity to learn from a professional. Never. Not only did I glean a fuck-ton of useful information about writing in general, but I also made a few really good connections. Totally worth it. It was awesome.

So that was the good stuff. I’m going to keep the bad stuff to a minimum because I feel like it deserves its own post. Yeah, it’s that complicated. Let’s just summarize it today as: I was extremely drained by the end because some people don’t have a filter and don’t have the social know-how to know when it’s time to stop talking. I’m too nice and I paid for it. (It also ties into the cryptic statement I made about writing groups, so again, more on that later.)

Okay, some rando stuff besides Norwest Con:

My other writing has been going well. My horror story is almost done, and I’ve got a few other short horror story ideas in the works. I’ve decided to do an anthology!

We went on our first family vacation! We drove down to California in a trailer and saw some family. The short version of that is that is was really fun and I’m glad we did it.

Crypticon was in May. Awesome. My daughter went as Jigsaw the puppet and that went over very well, also saw some really great cosplay, and my best friend and I got to watch some new independent films that were screening. I will probably talk more about that later too.

My daughter who started hip hop dance at the beginning of this school year had her first dance recital and it was awesome. Very stressful, but awesome.

And I’ve lost another 10 pounds, which I am quite proud of.

I hope you all are doing well. Don’t be afraid to stop by here or on Facebook or Instagram and say hello. I don’t bite very hard. Stay cool as the weather gets hotter. Drink water, wash your hair, wear lip balm, exfoliate, pet your dog or cat or snake, etc. Take care of you. Have a good week!