<![CDATA[Big Sky Words - Writing Blog]]>

<![CDATA[Big Sky Words - Writing Blog]]>Sun, 08 Mar 2026 10:59:45 -0600Weebly<![CDATA[Don’t Write Me Off Yet]]>Thu, 01 Nov 2018 23:58:16 GMThttps://www.bigskywords.com/writing-blog/dont-write-me-off-yet

It’s been a year and a month since I last posted on this blog.

I haven’t published a book on Amazon in 9 months.

That book was the last book in my 12-volume Mountain Man Series. The book has sold just 26 copies.

Prior to that, I hadn’t put out a book since April 2017, and another the month before that.

One was Dulce Truths and the other was Rose’s Rage, and they’ve sold 24 and 217 copies, respectively.

So far this year I’ve sold 993 books on Amazon, D2D, and Createspace.

The bestsellers this year are:

Social Media Politics: 87 sales
English Rocks: 87
Colter’s Winter: 79
Colter’s Hell: 66
Colter’s Run: 51
Colter’s Revenge: 36
Colter’s Friend: 34
Rose’s Rage: 28
Clark’s Campaign: 27
Tarot: The Mystery and the Mystique: 27

Those 10 books gave me 468 sales, or about 50% of my total sales this year.

I’ve made just over $3,000 in book income this year. I’ve made $31,449 from Amazon since 2013 when I started, and probably another $5,000 or so from D2D, Createspace and Smashwords.

I’m pretty happy with that, and also with the fact that my books still sell…and with no marketing behind them whatsoever.

In fact, I haven’t done a paid book promotion since April 2017.

I don’t write much these days because I just don’t have a lot of ideas.

The last few books I’ve put out are just sequels to other books I wrote earlier. I haven’t come up with a completely new story-line idea in years.

I used to come up with a lot, but many of those ideas never really sold. I don’t think they were wastes of time – they got me a lot of practice and improved my skills – but the marketplace wasn’t favorable to them.

I do get some good reviews from time to time, such as these:

Colter’s Friend, 5-stars
“This book was very good. Things didn't turn out the way you thought they would. I would recommend this book highly. I have been to the Three Forks recently and while reading this book I could picture the landscape.”

Dulce Truths, 5-stars
“Better than the 1st! I'm loving these books and can't wait for Volume 3..”

Rose’s Rage, 5-stars
“Exciting, educational, and INTERESTING! Considering that I have read this whole series in the last three weeks, it is needless to say these books are almost impossible to put down! I would recommend this series to anyone but especially those interested in historical fiction. I enjoyed it immensely.”

I’m not working on any fiction stuff at the moment, and haven’t done so in months.

The last 'writing work' I did was a few weeks ago when I put out the print version of Dulce Truths, mainly because someone gave it a good review and I thought others might want to read it too. Since then the print copy has sold a few copies, so I guess I was right.

Maybe I’ll get some ideas and start on some new books again. We’ll see. Thanks for reading.

]]><![CDATA[A Profitable September]]>Sun, 01 Oct 2017 06:00:00 GMThttps://www.bigskywords.com/writing-blog/a-profitable-september

September was a very good month for me.

For one thing, we saw all that forest fire smoke leave Missoula.

For another, my son was in school each day and that gave me more free time.

Finally, I made more money in September than any other month this year.

Yep, it’s time for the monthly report.

I really wish I could tell you how many words I wrote for September, but I can’t.

A week or so ago I woke up, and somehow overnight, my computer had deleted my income statement.

This is an MS Excel file that has my word counts, my income, my banking, and lots of other numbers.

Not sure what happened, but it’s gone and with it my daily tallies. I do know that I wrote 26,395 words…as that’s all I was able to determine based on saved files.

I figure my actual total was around 30,000 words, which has been standard this year.

Aside from that I put up 18 blog posts for the month.

I also sold 154 books...my second lowest month of the year (February was 126).

By far most of my income came from the 4 part-time jobs I worked.

What are those jobs?

I work UM football games;
I inventory used vehicles once a month;
I serve legal papers to people;
I work at a downtown bar.

Here’s how it all broke down for the month:

So I made over $2,000 in net earnings for the month. Back in May I’d made a little over $1,000.

That’s what adding a few extra jobs will do – give you more money.

I want even more, however. A big reason for this is that my wife is making so little.

As some of you may know, she owns a Montessori daycare here in town, but she’s really low on students.

That means workers have seen hours cut, and she’s seen her take-home pay cut…even though she’s working the same hours.

Such are the rigors of being a small business owner.

It’s why I’ve decided to spend $500 to take a bookkeeping class at the Missoula Lifelong Learning Center.

It’ll run from October to December, two days a week, and they work with the job service to find you a job when you finish.

So I’ll have some new skills and the ability to make more money for my family. Hey, I took two years of accounting in high school and got an ‘A’ in the class at UM too.

Mostly, I can’t rely on anyone else to take care of me. If I don’t work and make money to support my family, no one else is going to.

I certainly can’t rely on the government to support me.

When it comes to my writing, I’m still slaving-away on Clark’s Campaign.

This is the 12th volume of the Mountain Man Series and my goodness, it’s been tough!

A big problem is that I’m trying to cram 3 years of the War of 1812 into just 5 months.

It’s been fits and starts. I seem to go a couple days where I get some good work done, then I hit an impasse, and don’t work on it for a few days.

Then I get back into it, but my…this book just seems to be harder to write than some of my previous ones.

I dunno.

My books don’t sell that much anymore (last summer I was making $2,000 a month but this month it was just $600).

That’s frustrating, and it kind of puts a damper on your writing work ethic.

A lot of times I just feel like giving up and saying, “Yeah, I was a writer for a few years but it didn’t work out.”

Again, I dunno.

But I'm sure I'll keep on keeping on, and next month I'll have something else to tell you.

Until then...don't expect too much from this site.

I'm winding down.

A big reason for this is how little 'the news' or 'what's going on in the world' really affects me.

I got an inkling of this after the 2016 election, and then a bit more once Trump assumed office.

It really crystallized for me after the Quist loss in May, however.

Wow...Hillary loses, Trump takes office, and here in Montana a rich Republican beats a regular guy.

None of it had any affect on my life.

Writing about it, either pro or con, doesn't change anything, either.

So why do I care so much? What good is it doing me, and what could I be spending my time on?

Lately I've been spending my time making more money, and it's done more to benefit me than complaining about political things that don't really impact me...or anyone I know, for that matter.

So I'm winding down.

]]><![CDATA[4 Content Marketing Ideas That Earned Me $20,000]]>Tue, 12 Sep 2017 17:17:24 GMThttps://www.bigskywords.com/writing-blog/4-content-marketing-ideas-that-earned-me-20000

Yesterday I put out my quarterly rankings report.

Why do other political blogs lag behind me in visitors?

I had this to say:

“The reason is simple – no one cares about their content a month after it goes up.”

I told you that it was “too tied-into the news,” and that people aren’t interested in it months or years from now.

So what are people interested in months or years from now?

Typically it’s longer-form, list-style articles.

And that got me thinking about all the money I’ve made from my writing.

That in turn had me thinking of the decisions behind that.

What did I do to make a lot of money…what ideas did I have, and where did they come from?

I’d like to tell you about 4 of those ideas today.

Mountain Man Books: $12,000

Back in the summer of 2013 I didn’t know what to write on my site.

I did notice that a lot of my current traffic was made-up of people interested in the old mountain man articles I had up, however.

I’d written those months earlier and they were getting traffic.

The traffic was small, mind you – about 100 or 200 people a week…if that.

But hey – they were interested in what I was writing!

So I wrote more of it.

I did several posts about popular mountain man nonfiction books, each with an Amazon Affiliate link so they could see – and hopefully purchase – that book.

Each time they did make a purchase, I’d make a few pennies…maybe even a buck!

Yippy!

Now, I’ve only made about $650 from the Amazon Affiliate income I get from the direct product links to those books…and that over 3 years.

That ain’t gonna cut it.

So I watched this miniscule affiliate income tick up each month, and I wondered how I could make more.

Why not a novel? Hell, by that point I’d written a dozen or two, and I’d been kicking around a mountain man novel idea for a couple years.

So in March-April 2015 I wrote the first of my Colter novels.

It got a one-star review shortly after going up on Amazon.

Sales slowed…and had never been that good to begin with.

But those sales remained steady, and after a time they picked up…with the help of subsequent volumes in the series.

Sure, it’s not my site so much that’s pulling in that income…but it was the site that gave me the idea.

A lot of people have been interested in those kind of novels, and many probably get to them after seeing my site and its mountain man articles.

So far I’ve sold over 4,400 of the six ‘Colter’ books, which has earned me just over $12,100.

The Lesson?

If you see articles on your website that are popular (whether 100 hits or 10,000), then it’s a good indication that you should write more.

Don’t be afraid to go with book format, either. Don’t be afraid to switch from nonfiction to fiction, too.

If I hadn’t done both of those, my income from mountain man-related writings would be in the hundreds of dollars, not the thousands.

English Rocks: $5,000

I taught English in China from 2008 to 2013.

I learned a lot of stuff during that time, and in 2012 I started a website to give other teachers those ideas.

No one visited.

Hardly anyone visits today.

I gave up on the site’s blog a couple years ago, back when it was getting about 300 unique visitors a day…if that.

Now it’s back down to around 100 to 150.

And I’m fine with that – the site continues to make me money.

Mostly, it’s the ideas I put onto the site…and then later put into an eBook.

Those ideas were simply games and lesson plans and little tricks that helped teachers get through an hour of teaching.

I knew the ideas worked, and other teachers I talked with knew they worked too.

So while no one visited the site where the ideas were originally written, they did buy the collected ideas in book format.

And those who buy the book get a link at the end to a special page on the site with dozens of downloads.

Since I published the book in 2013 it’s sold 743 copies.

Most are eBooks at $9.99 but many are print books at $19.95.

Those sales have netted me just over $5,000.

The Lesson?

If you have ideas that are in your head, your website is a great place to get them out. They might make more sense there.

But remember – they might not make you any money. Perhaps another format would work better. Why not give it a try?

Google AdSense: $2,000

Back in 2013 I didn’t know what to write on my Montana blog.

I decided to put up a post asking what people wanted to read.

No one commented for weeks, then someone I knew in China did.

She was interested in famous people from Montana, so I wrote up a monster, 4,000-word post on the subject.

It really started to get views, and then after waiting too long, I finally put some ads into the post.

I also wrote a lot of other posts like it, and put ads in them too.

Then the income started to come in.

All-time earnings from Google AdSense are now $2,033…which is a lot more than the $100 threshold I finally managed to pass in February 2015.

I started using Google AdSense in August 2012, but didn’t get serious about it until 2014.

Took over two years to get $100 and then in the two years since then I’ve made nearly $2,000 more.

Where is that money coming from?

Over 2,500 ads on this site and my ESL site…but mostly just 30 ads that are pulling in the bigger bucks.

These include:

Michael Keaton famous celebrity post 1: $168
Montana blog sidebar ad: $163
Michael Keaton famous celebrity post 2: $107
25 Montanans post: $92
Homepage ad: $85
Cover design article: $81
Montana famous post 3: $62

So that’s $758 just for those 7 ads…but remember, that’s stretched over a couple years.

The Lesson?

Don’t be afraid to ask people what they want to read. If it takes off, don’t wait too long to monetize it.

Content Curation: $1,000

From April 2014 to March 2016 I put up a weekly content curation post.

It was called Midweek Content Roundup and for awhile there it was getting up to 1,000 unique views on the day it went up.

I was quite pleased with that, and with the small increase in ad income for those days.

But boy…it’s a lot of work going around to sites each week, reading their stuff, picking the best, and then doing a short write-up for your readers!

I did it 101 weeks in a row.

I also collected those 101 weeks-worth of curated content and put it into two books: Stand Out and Get Noticed.

It was pretty simple, but time-consuming.

I had to cut-and-paste all the weekly posts into one document before categorizing them into social media marketing, content marketing, and SEO sections.

I then had to further categorize them into various categories in those sections, such as Facebook, Twitter, social media images, posting schedules, and whatnot.

Real pain in the ass, but people were willing to pay for that work.

The books never sold that well, maybe because they were priced around $10.

I did manage to sell 228 of them and that’s netted me $1,028.

The Lesson?

If you’re doing a weekly post, collect them all for a year-end anthology.

It’s best to build this as the year goes on, perhaps on a monthly basis. If you don’t, you’ll have a lot of work at the end of the year.

Conclusion

I got lucky.

I took things that I was interested in or that I was doing at the time, and I wrote about them.

People read them.

I wrote more.

More people read them.

I did this all on my two websites.

I noticed the traffic going up, and I switched those articles into book format and I made a lot of money.

I monetized some articles and I made a lot of money.

I got lucky.

But there were some good ideas and decisions that helped bring that luck about.

Take a look at your interests and put them to work for you.

It might take awhile, but maybe you’ll make $20,000 like I have.

]]><![CDATA[A Back-on-Track August]]>Fri, 01 Sep 2017 06:00:00 GMThttps://www.bigskywords.com/writing-blog/a-back-on-track-august

Goodbye summer; welcome fall!

I’m already wearing my sweater more, both mornings and night.

Yep, the weather’s changing, the kids are back in school, and here we are once again with the monthly report…the 52nd on this site.

4 years I’ve been putting these up. They’re all pretty similar – just me telling you what I did, how much I made, and what’s next.

So let’s get started.

For August I managed to write over 31,000 words, put up 15 blog posts, and sell 194 books.

That’s 1 fewer book sale than last month, and my 4th-highest selling month of the year.

When you look at my income for the month, you’ll see that it came from 10 sources.

Here’s how that breaks down.

I made about $11 more than last month, meaning this was my best month of the year…so far.

A lot of people think $1,500 a month is living in poverty. A lot of people think you’re doing really well if you’re making that much.

Hey, we know that 78% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck. That comes out to 98 million of our 125 million full-time workers.

We know that most Americans can’t come up with $500 in the case of an emergency.

And we know that 47% of Americans don’t own any stocks so can’t participate in the largest bubble we’ve yet seen.

I am one of those people.

I’m just not making that much money from my writing anymore, so I have to supplement it with part-time jobs.

I sure have made a lot of money from my writing when you add it all up over the years, though.

You might have heard me mention that I’ve sold over 11,000 books now.

What I don’t think I’ve mentioned are the earnings.

I like to look at it like this: I graduated college with $31,000 in student loan debt.

With the end of this month, I’ll have made over $28,000 in book royalties.

So just $3,000 more to go and my writing would have, in effect, paid for my schooling.

That’s a pretty good feeling!

Another good feeling was getting back into the swing of it.

Yep, I’m writing again…at least more than just the usual political dross.

I was quite surprised to see that 3 months went by without me working on my latest Mountain Main Series novel.

The last time I added anything to it was May 15. Then out of the blue, on August 15, I opened the document up and started working on it again.

The idea was to just open it up and look at it, scroll through the 90 pages and 17,000 words that I had typed up.

Instead I added a bit of prose to one section and, still feeling like I had something to say, went ahead and added in two new chapters as well.

2,000 words in under an hour. It felt good, like riding a bike. I was worried I’d forgotten how to do it. Turns out I’d forgotten nothing.

Now, if you’re in the camp that says I’m a terrible writer and that my books suck, then I’d never learned anything to begin with.

I’ll just take a moment to mention those $28,000 in sales once again…ahem.

Anyways…I think I ran into the same problem I did when writing the last book – I got bored and didn’t know what to do.

Thankfully, nearly all of my novels have alternating point of view chapters.

This means that you can follow one group of characters, then go and follow another group somewhere else that are doing something completely different.

Currently I still have these major alternating POV’s in their own sections, with the main group taking up the first two parts of the book, the second group taking up the third, and then the idea that they’ll both come together at some point.

It might just be better to take those two POV sets and throw them together, breaking up the two groups better and enabling more cliffhanger-style chapter endings.

That keeps people reading and that’s probably what I’ll do.

Hell, I’m even in the process of getting a cover done for this book so you know it’ll be done soon.

Since starting again on the 15th I’ve more than doubled the book, getting up past 34,000 words and about 160 pages.

Feels good to be working on my novels again.

]]><![CDATA[A Get-By July]]>Tue, 01 Aug 2017 06:00:00 GMThttps://www.bigskywords.com/writing-blog/a-get-by-july

July comes to an end.

Summer is close on its heels.

I’m sure all the forest fire smoke we have around Missoula will be here well into October, however...maybe longer.

But that doesn’t concern us much today.

We’re here to talk about writing, or the lack thereof.

For the month I wrote about 18,000 words. Those were all just Montana blog posts (of which there were 17) and comments on other sites.

In July I sold 186 books, which is one more than last month.

Those sales break down like so:

Amazon: 140
D2D: 27
Createspace: 19

If you figure an average royalty of $3 for each of those sales, that gets me $558 for the month...though I won’t be paid that money for another 60 days or so.

Impressive for ‘your hobby’ or ‘doing a little art on the side,’ but it doesn’t pay all the bills anymore.

I have other jobs for that.

Yep, most of my income isn’t coming from writing these days.

Here’s what my income was for the month, and where it came from:

I have no qualms about sharing this information with you, for a variety of reasons.

Few people are reading it.
Fewer people care.

We like to make a big deal about income in this country, but if you’re just honest about what you make...who really gives a shit?

We often mistake the sentiment of caring for actual caring.

It’s easy to say “I care,” but it’s much harder to follow through with concrete actions that actually show you care.

Anyways, bit of a tangent there.

So let’s get into my income.

There were 9 total sources of income this month, and it was actually my most profitable month of the year (last month was the second most).

A little more than just ‘getting by, huh? I actually did pretty good.

Oh, not compared to those making thousands of dollars a month...but what do I need all the money for anyways?

Material possessions?

By far the biggest source of income was the new job I picked up in May. Usually that income would be a few hundred dollars less, but I worked more this month.

Altogether, my three paychecks took me over the $1,000-mark. Most of the other $500 came from my books.

I’m not expecting a lot to change next month...though I might actually make more money.

One exciting adventure this month was the death of my computer.

I’d bought the thing in Hong Kong in 2013 and its time was done. It just wouldn’t charge anymore when it was plugged in.

So I got a new computer. It’s a Lenovo Ideapad 100S. Got it for $149, on sale from $229.

I’m not that thrilled with it.

One of the shift keys is much smaller, and closer to the ‘up arrow’ key. This screws me up a lot.

For another, MS Office gave out on me, so I’m now just using Google Sheets. I don’t mind that, but my computer has so little memory and storage space that if you have a few tabs open it crashes a lot.

Mainly, I’m thinking of returning it and getting a $179 Google Chromebook. The screen is a little smaller and there’s no ‘delete’ key, but I’m feeling ready to move away from Microsoft.

There was a lot of camping in July, but I think that’s done.

The increased level of fire restrictions means you often can’t have a campfire. What’s the point of camping if you can’t do that?

Maybe in September, but I’m not counting on it.

I’m not counting on doing a lot of writing this month, either.

I mean...why?

No one is emailing me asking me when the next book is going to be out, or when the next blog post will be up.

Most people do not care for my efforts, so I haven’t been putting a lot of effort forth.

Expect that trend to continue into August and probably for some time after.

]]><![CDATA[A Nice June]]>Sat, 01 Jul 2017 06:00:00 GMThttps://www.bigskywords.com/writing-blog/a-nice-june

I liked June.

For the month I wrote 33,377 words.

Yep, my word counts are still below 100,000 words a month for the 8th month in a row now.

There are two main reasons for this:

I’m not writing fiction.

I’m not writing for other people.

Mostly I just write on this site each day then go off and do other stuff.

I still sold 185 books for the month.

That breaks down like so:

Colter’s Winter: 20
Rose’s Rage: 18
Colter’s Hell: 15
Colter’s Run: 13
Colter’s Friend: 12

Those are my top-selling books.

Just 78 sales for those 5 books. Can’t really make a living off that.

In fact, I made just $681.24 from book sales this month.

Just.

Many would kill for that level of interest in their books.

But again, it’s not really enough to live off of.

Thankfully I had 10 sources of income for June.

That breaks down like so:

So for the month of June I made $1,343.63.

I’m pretty happy with that – it’s nearly $300 more than I made last month.

In fact, it’s my most profitable month this year.

Of course the big problem isn’t really my income – I don’t need a lot to live on – it’s my lack of healthcare.

Yeah, I’ve got Obamacare…but with a $10,000 deductible it’s pretty much worthless to me, aside from catastrophes.

That’s why I’m applying to just about every job that offers health insurance.

So far the search has come up short.

I was really confident that I’d get a full-time dishwasher position at UM.

The interview on Monday went pretty well, I thought, but I never got a call on Friday like they said I would.

Damn, can’t even get a job washing dishes.

That makes you feel pretty worthless, but it’s best to nip that train of thinking right in the bud as soon as possible.

I graduated high school
I have a college degree
I’ve lived in another country
I’ve travelled the world
I’ve written 80 books
I have a successful website
I’ve been married 5 years
I have a son

Worthless?

Naw, I’ve done a lot in my 36 years and I’m sure I’ll do a lot more in the 36 or so I have left.

That includes writing more books, both fiction and nonfiction.

It’s just that at the moment I’m not forcing myself to write, which I’ve often done in the past.

It works.

You get the books done.

But gosh darn…that doesn’t mean anyone’s gonna buy ‘em.

And I’m fine with that.

Like I said, I’m looking for other work and have been for some time. Many, many Amazon authors are just like me.

We’re just not making the money we used to, and probably won’t ever again.

Oh, it could happen, but for most of us it’s not likely.

And I’m fine with that.

How much do you need…whether it’s sales or money or notoriety?

What is important?

For me over the past few months, it hasn’t been writing.

That’ll likely continue.

And I’m fine with that.

So until next month…have a good one.

]]><![CDATA[A Worthwhile May]]>Thu, 01 Jun 2017 20:44:27 GMThttps://www.bigskywords.com/writing-blog/a-worthwhile-may

May was a pretty good month.

Nothing much to complain about.

I didn’t do a whole lot for the month, especially when it came to writing.

I pumped out just over 33,000 words for the month, most coming because of the 18 blog posts I put on this site.

I sold 142 books in May, which is my second-slowest month this year, after the 126 sales in February.

I made about $600 from all my book sales this month, and close to $1,100 for the month when you add in my other sources of income.

Not a whole lot, which is why I’ve been looking for other work.

I now have 4 part-time jobs.

So I don’t focus on writing as much, hence the low word counts.

I guess I’m taking a break.

Nonetheless, thanks for reading the site and buying my books.

I have about 80 of them so there’s a little somethin' for everyone.

Have a happy June!

]]><![CDATA[An Anxious April]]>Mon, 01 May 2017 14:07:08 GMThttps://www.bigskywords.com/writing-blog/an-anxious-april

Sometimes I go back and look at old months to get ideas for the post title.

I discovered that April is always a crummy month.

In 2013 April was busy.

2014 had a lot of zeroes while 2015 was all about the agony.

In 2016 things were more productive.

And now it’s 2017.

So let’s just put this in perspective.

First of all, in 2013 I wasn’t even living in the country.

In the April 2014 post I bitched about never getting done with Colter’s Winter, which had “been on the word count meters for months and months and needs to be finished.”

By 2015 I had finished it, but I was bitching about the book getting just 1 sale on the day it was released…and that because I bought the damn thing.

Fast forward 2 years and that book has sold over 1,500 copies, double anything else I’ve written.

By April 2016 I wasn’t complaining much as I’d just released the 7th book in that series and mentioned that nearly 1,900 of those series books had been sold.

And now here we are in 2017.

When I look back on last year’s post from this time I see not much has changed.

Is that a good thing?

Probably not.

But this year things will change, as I’ll be starting a new job on the 15th of the month that goes to mid-July.

Don’t worry – I’ll still be able to write my thoughts out about MT politics and such during that time.

Well…let me scratch that. I just got a call 2 minutes ago from the place saying that I’ll not be doing that job.

They gave me some excuse, but personally I think it’s because of my politics and my political writings.

Oh well.

Guess I’ll have to find something else.

So it’ll be scraping by for another month and then come June I should be doing alright again moneywise.

And then what?

I have to be honest…I haven’t been writing much on my novels.

Dulce Truths was a complete and utter flop.

It sold 5 copies for the month, again, one of them because I bought the damn thing.

I did manage to sell a few copies of Dulce Base, the first book in the series.

So maybe Book 2 will catch up…at some point.

I guess I just don’t feel like writing much.

I feel a bit bored with what I’m working on.

And would you want to read that?

I doubt it.

I don’t want to read it right now.

So I’m sitting back, not doing much, writing more blog posts than usual, and trying my darndest not to spend money.

In that regard, May should be quite similar to most months.

]]><![CDATA[Free Fiction Friday #116: The Pond in Setter’s Wood]]>Fri, 21 Apr 2017 14:46:52 GMThttps://www.bigskywords.com/writing-blog/free-fiction-friday-116-the-pond-in-setters-wood

Note: This is the one-hundred-and-sixteenth post in Free Fiction Fridays.

These are short stories put up occasionally on Fridays that you can read for free.

When did the evil first come?

No one really knew, least of all Conner Douglas.

Why, he was just 14, not even in high school yet. He would be next year, which was really just a couple months. Yep, it was summer in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, though summer was almost over. Conner and his friends discussed that while sitting by Gooseneck Creek.

“There ain’t nothin’ to do!” James nearly shouts, though it comes out as more of a sigh, a depressed one at that.

James was the outspoken leader of the group, though he’d only achieved that position by being more bully than leader. His hair was a wavy brown, his eyes the same color, and his face small and compact with a straight nose and long cheekbones that’d have the girls all over him in another year or two.

“Yeah, no duh!” Mike says, rolling his eyes.

Mike was the brains of the bunch, at least if you went by his report cards. All A’s except for that damn B+ in shop class. God, he hated thinking about that and that damn Mr. Reynolds and his hand with one finger missing from some classroom accident back in the 80s. Remember, safety first, not second, he’d always say, walking around and holding that half-finger up before putting up a second, longer one beside it.

Mike rolled his eyes again as the image of that finger came into his mind. He had short, black hair that hung straight, and despite having just turned 15, he was showing the first faint traces of a mustache on that upper lip of his.

“What, you suddenly forget you’ve spent your whole life in Houghton?” Spitty says, to laughs from Conner and Mike, but a raised fist and mock gesture from James.

Spitty’s real name was Sinclair, but everyone called him Spitty because of the time in 3rd grade when the boys tricked him into drinking from the teacher’s bourbon-laced coffee. He’d spent the next 15 minutes spitting it up, much to the enjoyment of the class, though not to the teacher’s. She hadn’t been around much longer after that, but the boys had.

Fifteen years was a long time to spend in Houghton, a backwater town of 8,000 located 4 hours north of Green Bay. It might as well have been a million miles, for all the good it did the town. Ever since 2008 businesses had been closing, and nothing had been coming in to replace them. The real blow came in 2011 when the copper mine closed its doors. Three months later the brass fitting plant closed up shop, ending a 131-year tradition of keeping it local. Now the parts would be made in Mexico.

Trump would change all that, of course – their daddies all said so. Well, James's, Mike’s and Spitty’s did. Conner hadn’t had a dad since his had walked out on his mom when he was just 2. The revolving door of alcoholic and drug-addicted substitutes that took up the part for a time didn’t much discuss politics, or at least Conner didn’t hear them. But then they’d be gone after his mom finally got tired of the inevitable beatings, and it’d be starting over time once again. Conner wondered if the current father-figure in his life – a real piece of work named Henry – was still beating his mom or passed out already. It was past 3 in the afternoon, after all. The thought made Conner want to go anywhere but home, and he said so.

“I got an idea of where we can go,” he says.

“Yeah, where?” Mike replies.

“The pond in Setter’s Wood.”

Silence meets that pronouncement, silence and wide-eyed looks. Was Henry layin’ into Conner now too and not just his mom? the boys think.

The thing was…the pond in Setter’s Wood was haunted. Everyone knew it. No one talked about it. It’d been that way for years, decades…centuries even. And it still was haunted. They all remembered the stories from two years ago when that high schooler from Dollar Bay was found dead there, just splayed out there beside the pond. No cause of death was ever determined.

It wasn’t the first death, that was for sure.

They’d all heard the stories. Back in the 1920s a woman – fraught with despair over the thought that the man she loved didn’t love her in return – rushed into Setter’s Wood and found herself at a pond there. Feeling all was lost, she flung herself into the water and drown.

The man she thought hadn’t loved her mounted a search and they found the body the next day. The mausoleum he built for her in Forest Hill Cemetery was still the largest in the state. He joined her in it three years later, at the ripe old age of 32. Most said it was a broken heart that’d killed him. Others said it was a heart attack after seeing his former love come up out of the pond for him. His body had been found next to the same pond she’d killed herself at, after all, though that wasn’t that unusual. He’d had a stone bench installed at the pond and was known to sit on it for hours at a time, just staring into the waters.

Some said it was the bench that was haunted, and not the pond. Infused with some kind of witch-enhanced stone or cement, it exuded dark auras and instilled nasty thoughts in all those that sat upon it. Others said it wasn’t the pond at all, but the forest around it. Stories of old Indian sacrifices and burial grounds usually came up as explanation. Then there was the talk of secret portals, extra dimensions, even UFOs or Bigfoots. In the end, however, no one really knew what the cause of the deaths was. So far there’d been more than forty over the years.

“I’ll go,” James says finally, breaking the silence.

“What?” Spitty says, his face screwing up in shock and concern and disbelief, while beside him Conner smiles and claps James on the back, letting out a, “That’s my man!” as he does so. All eyes then go to Mike.

“Well?” James says to him.

Mike moves his jaw from side to side for a few moments, then gives a shrug and says, “aw, fuck it – let’s go.”

There were a lot of, “But…but…but’s” from Spitty, but the other three were already laughing and joking as they started to walk. They kept it up the two miles to Setter’s Wood, the better to push down their fear, which of course none of them would admit they felt. The talking died down, however, as the boys got deeper into the Wood, and then ceased altogether as they got closer to the pond.

None of them had been there before, but they knew they were on the right path. From time to time they’d see a ‘Danger’ sign pounded to a tree, or maybe a ‘Keep Out.’ One time they saw a sign with no words, just a yellow yield-style thingy with a red skull and crossbones over it. That one had stopped Spitty in his tracks.

“Guys, I’m goin’ home.”

“To cry to momma?” James had shot back, chuckling.

“C’mon, man…it’s just a little farther,” Mike had said.

Conner had said nothing, just paused for a moment before continuing on. Soon the others were following behind him once again. In all it took them nearly an hour of walking into Setter’s Wood before they came to the pond, and they nearly missed the thing entirely, so small was it.

“God, I’ve seen parking lot puddles bigger than that!” Mike says when they’re all standing there.

“And how ‘bout that stupid bench, huh?” James says, pointing over at it and laughing. It looks like a child’s bench almost, so small is it.

“Yeah, but how about that pond, huh?” Conner says, and begins moving toward it.

A few broken branches stuck up around the pond’s edges, while last year’s dead grass still clung to what new growth could push up around the water. There were a few healthy-looking pine trees a ways back, but most of the trees that were closest to the pond – white ash, birch, and ironwoods – had spindly branches with no leaves, branches that seemed almost like skeletal claws just waiting for some young boys to grab and pull into the water.

The summer sun seemed to fade away as the boys stood there, and it wasn’t just that it’d gone behind a cloud. A mist was appearing, they would swear, a kind of fog that was slowly moving in from all sides. An evil was moving in on them too.

“Guys, I don’t like the feel of this place,” Spitty says.

“Just…just…look at the water,” James says, his usual snide tone gone and replaced by something…else. He too begins walking toward the pond.

Mike rolls his eyes at the two and turns back to look at Spitty, who’s slowly backing away. “It’s alright,” he says, “let’s just…”

His voice trails-off as some strange feeling takes hold of him. He looks back at Conner and James, suddenly feeling that they’ve made a very bad mistake.

The pond is seemingly pulling the boys toward it. Conner is staring at it intently, looking deeply into its shallow water as he slowly walks closer. Behind him, James’s face is a mask of struggle, one part of him wanting to go toward the pond, another wanting to pull away from it. Still, for every step back he takes he goes another two forward.

Mike was doing the best to stay away, looking over his shoulder at Spitty backing off while glancing forward at the other two, and saying, “Guys, don’t do this…don’t do this…” over and over, perhaps more to himself than the others.

Spitty was the furthest back, perhaps thirty yards from the water’s edge. He saw what was happening to Conner and James, and also how Mike was beginning to struggle. He’d seen enough. Without a word he turns and starts running back into the trees.

“Spitty…Spitty!” Mike calls after him, still turning his head back and forth to look from him to the other two. Then Spitty is gone, swallowed up by the trees and out of sight. “Shit,” Mike mutters, and turns his attention fully back to Conner and James. He can’t believe what he sees.

Conner is at the edge of the pond now, and beginning to kneel down as if to look at something in the water. What he doesn’t see – but what Mike sees clearly – are wispy tentacles rising up from the center of the pond. They’re not real; he can see that right away. They’re more smoke than substance, almost like they were formed out of the same fog-like mist that was closing in on them from the trees.

“Conner, Conner!” he shouts, but it does no good. Conner doesn’t hear him, and it’s as if James doesn’t see what’s going on either. He’s now just feet from the edge of the pond, and in a few moments he’ll be there, probably to kneel down beside Conner and look at whatever it is they’re looking at.

Mike struggles, wants to call out again, but can’t seem to make his mouth work. He also can’t seem to make his legs work, though they’re moving just fine…moving him closer to the pond, that is. The fog and mist is getting closer too. Already Mike can’t even see the trees on the other side of the pond, just the water now.

And then it happens. Those tentacles of white mist or smoke or whatever they are lunge forward, latch onto Conner as he’s looking down…but don’t grab ‘him.’ Instead Conner’s body stays right there, but it’s as if his…soul…is grabbed.

Mike watches wide-eyed as the tentacles seem to stick onto a white corporeal form of Conner and pull it from his body, then right down into the pond. James – or at least his body – collapses beside the pond, a pale, ghost-like look to it.

A moment later another tentacle shoots forth, this one at James. The same thing happens – that white corporeal form is pulled from James’s body and then James collapses, dead…Mike knows he’s dead.

He knows he’ll be dead soon too. His feet continue to carry him forward, closer to the pond, which is now just a few feet away. Tears begin to come to Mike’s eyes, but he can’t stop himself from moving. Then the white mist closes in all around him and he’s at the pond, and then looking down into it.

His eyes go wide at what he sees, but only for a moment. Then something cold touches him, and all the warmth seems to flood out of him. He never feels his body collapse to the ground beside his two friends.

Three hours later Spitty was back, this time with the police and sheriff’s deputies and even some firemen.

They find Conner, James and Mike laying there dead beside the pond, no sign of foul play and no sign that they’d even been in the water, let alone drown in it. When Spitty tells them of the mist and the tentacles the first responders cast weary glances at one another, but no one jokes. They’d heard similar before, and knew what the coroner would make of it.

“Can’t find a cause of death to save my life,” he’d say, the same thing he’d been saying since he took the job back in ’74.

The next day the Mining Gazette runs the story, saying that the pond in Setter’s Wood has claimed yet more lives. That puts the grand total up to forty-seven since the deaths had started nearly one hundred years before. And there’d likely be more, the article had finished…a lot more.

THE END

]]><![CDATA[Dulce Truths is On Sale!]]>Mon, 03 Apr 2017 06:00:00 GMThttps://www.bigskywords.com/writing-blog/dulce-truths-is-on-sale

Kitchen sink.

That’s what I could have called this novel: Kitchen Sink.

Because when it comes to alien conspiracy theory and ufology, that’s what I threw in – the kitchen sink.

I mean, Dulce Truths has it all!

The Black Knight Satellite
The 177th Time Travel Division
Secret Moon Bases
Alien Motherships around Venus & Mercury & the Moon
The 1989 & 1991 Russian UFO Crashes
Majestic 12
Alien Abductions
Hybrids
Lemurians
The Atlantis/Reptilian Connection
The Reptilian Invasion of Lyra
Bkti, the Alien Crash Survivor
The Lost Planet Maldech
Hitler & Antarctica
The Hollow Earth Theory
Paul Bennewitz
John Titor
And a whole lot more!

Yes, this book has it all.

The story takes place in a very short 12-hour or so time period as well, all of it taking place hours after the first book ends.

There’s time travel involved, however, so characters are skipping about.

I’d like to mention one big difference from the first book as well:

Said vs. says.

Yep, I’ve switched from the past to the present tense.

I want readers to have more of a ‘now’ feeling when they’re reading, like things are happening right then and there.

We’ll see how it goes.

I’m not expecting a lot of sales on this book, for a variety of reasons.

First, the sci-fi categories on Amazon are very competitive, with books needing about 10 sales a day just to get on the decent Top 100 lists.

Then, it’s been over 2 years since I released the first book.

Finally, I just don’t get that many sales on new books to begin with so my expectations are always kinda low.

Anyways, I’m super happy the book is done and out there and ready for those that like this stuff!

Maybe you’re one of ‘em.

I sure hope you’ll give Dulce Truths a look, or if you haven’t yet, the first book in the series, Dulce Base.

Thanks for reading!

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