The Vault

Has anyone ever seen that Stephen King movie, “Dreamcatcher”? The main character has a memory vault in his head… I’ve always loved that idea! I have something similar though mine is strictly for stories and fragments of stories—ideas and perhaps future works of fiction. Mine is a combination of memory, and a small filing cabinet where each folder is labeled according to the working titles of each piece. I call this little imaginative zone “the Vault.”
I won’t exaggerate and say that there are thousands of stories in my vault, it’s not quite that big, so I guess I could tell you that there are just less than thousands of stories in my vault! I know right; that’s a lot!
The fragments in the vault are varied and range in genre, age group, completions, etc. They can be as small as a few paragraphs of dialog between two people discussing how one can extend their lifespan by not clenching when using the restroom, to thirty+ pages of notes on a story about a girl who falls in love with death!—by the way, I’m actually turning that one into a novel!
Over the last practically eight years I haven’t done much with my vault except add to it, since I’ve been working almost solely on The Unusuals books. My vault has grown sad and lonely… so now it’s screaming at me to select some new material to work on!
I’ve contemplated doing an anthology called “If Only Hollywood Would Hire Me,” but now I’m thinking I might go down a different path… With the third installment of the Unusuals Trilogy coming to a close, I’ve been opening my vault and have selected six pieces to focus on next. I think I might tackle each one consecutively according to popularity ranking, and then I’m going to put together that anthology… Only this time I’m going to empty my vault!
Everything I’ve written over the last—well, HALF my life—will be smashed together in one big chronicle, fragmented and not! I don’t know if I’ll publish it, or simply follow my process to printing and binding a few paperback copies for my closest friends and relations. Either way, I think it will be fun, and it will allow me to get reacquainted with the writer I once was, and compare her to what I am now. I think my writing has aged, or matured if you will, over the last five years especially, and it will be fun to see some more of the adolescent pieces I’ve done!
Until the time that “The Vault” anthology comes out, I’ll be pulling some samples up and posting them on my blog. I would love to hear what you all think! I live for constructive criticism and praise!
The day before yesterday one of my friends called me to let me talk to his young daughter who had just finished reading the first two books in the Unusuals trilogy. She wanted to tell me just how much she loved them and thought it was really awesome that I wrote them! Her dad even suggested a possible visit from me to his daughters writing class, as a guest speaker! The combination of the two of these wonderful people just made my day! I love to talk about my stories, and I love it even more when other people talk about them too!
Well, that’s it for right now, but like I said I’ll be pulling up pieces from the vault to show you soon! Over the next three weeks I’m trying to get those six other pieces put together and finish writing The War of Hope (WOH). The six include the young adult paranormal romance “Johnny Darkling,” the adult romance “The Two Hearts of Jane,” paranormal romance “Reaper,” the science-fiction/fantasy “Kiss of the Phoenix,” the post-apocalyptic zombie thriller “The Dead Half,” and the more-adult bonus Unusuals book, “The Keeper of Time.” I’m very excited about all of these works, and I can’t wait to get them to you in their proper novel form! Wish me fun!