The Summer Hiatus of Stories

“Yeah we played 'til we died, and now we're all dead,
But the man says "You gotta get up there again
And you can't come down 'til the brimstone turns to ice.”

- Graveyard Train “Ballad for Beelzebub”

Dear Reader,

               

Here I am reading about Order of the Solar Temple, a cult (here is a good podcast about it: link here), who ended up like most cults. You know, dead with a lot of dead people around them, just this time they didn’t drink anything to kill themselves. They used fire and bullets, not sure which way I would like to go … more than likely starting with not joining a cult. While a read about these poor folks I’m eating a bowl of sweet peas for dinner. Now, that might be the oddest thing about me so far, sweet peas for dinner? Yes, I like sweet peas a lot, ask anyone I know but most of all my old roommates about love for sweet peas. (It might be a writer thing.)

But we are not here to talk about my unusual personal endeavors or what I like to eat, we are here to talk about the sort of hiatus I’m taking for this summer. But before we get into it let me tell you a tiny story …

Back in the day when I was in college for the painting, I was sitting the studio working on a few watercolors paintings for myself. I spend most of my time between classes in the studio because I enjoyed being there and my Prof would feed me most of the time. I mean, she also put me to work after I got fed, which was too much like my grandmother for comfort now that I think about it.

But one day, when I was working on a painting, my Prof came over to see what I was doing. She shook her head over my shoulder, not saying a word, and then walked away a moment later. I had grown used to the point of having her hover over my shoulder that I didn’t even think about it or really notice. She was doing her job making sure I was hard at work, and to see if I needed any help, I didn’t, but it was nice.

A few seconds later, my Prof came back with a block of watercolor paper older than me. It was a block she got overseas, I believed from Italy, and she was somewhere in her late twenty. She handed me the block telling me I could have it and I should use it for now on.

I was shocked, dumbfounded, but I took it because saying no wasn’t an option.

If none of you have ever worked with watercolor, then let me tell you it can be very difficult to use. It takes some time to understand the paint, and at the same time, an understanding the water will do what it wants no matter how much you try to control it. The best thing you can do with watercolor paint is to guide it into the places you want, but –

I found out quickly the quality of the paper made a world’s of different. It almost made my painting a thousand times better, and I almost couldn’t believe it. Also, unknown to me at the time, I can no longer buy cheap watercolor. Now, instead of spending twenty bucks for a block, I was doomed to spend eighty plus dollars for a single block of watercolor paper. (This is why artists are poor, by the way.)

With better paper, my work started to how a higher quality of work to it and this bring me to the point of my hiatus, at the core of it I want to give you a better quality of stories.      

I am stepping back from posting so heavily on my Writer’s Café for a few months. I’m still going to finish out this story from the Talon family (The Dead Moon), but after the story is over, I’m taking a little break. I’m still going to post here and there, but mostly blogs style works. They are going to be my little thoughts hitting the web, and I’m thinking about writing up some books review, movies review, and other reviews I can think of during the day.

There are so many people I talk to about writing, and I leave the convince thinking about how great the talkings would be as a blog, but with me having to keep the stories flowing like I am, I don’t have time to write up the blogs while working on everything else.

And then there are the stories at the core of this … I want to start giving you guys a high quality of stories than what I am posting, which means I’m going to have to take some time to work on my new stories.

I have always said the stories I post to this site was simply just stories for fun. I didn’t put a lot of work into them, and I hated going back to edit them. The idea was I would simply write stories like I was running my on Saturday morning cartoon and JUST be fun, but they were never meant to be great. I would write these stories as warm up to my main novels, or when my main stories were starting the lag, I would take a break and write these stories. Most of the time, I would use the stories to understand a new world or the characters I was building but again, they weren’t meant to be much of anything.

And yet, these stories are the main source of my writing most you get to read. Okay, not most of you but all of you get to read my work through this means, and I want to give you something better. I have to also start thinking about how these stories are reflecting on my goal to get published. I’m sure many agents or publishers have come across my stories on Writer’s Cafe, and I want them to start seeing my better work.

I’m not a shame for what I have put up on the web. I have put a lot of work, not as much that is needed to make them better, but a good bit in the stories you guys have read. I have put out a great amount of work weekly, and that is not to say anything about the stories I haven’t put up yet.

So, I’m taking a little break to work on one good story for you guys, and I’m going to take the time to make it good, but that means you won’t get as much work form me as normal. I will still write blogs and maybe, letters from Brain Redtales, but for the most part, there is going to be a hiatus for a while.

I still plan on posting on Sundays and Wednesdays, but it might not be weekly, or at least, it will be until Dead Moon warps up, but afterward, there will be a break. I hope you will stay here with me during this little break in my writing and I hope you will come back for something better and greater than I have been putting out. Trust me there is something fun and great coming down the pile line just keep the faith and keep reading.

Godspeed,

  Chase

The pen's name is Lucille.