Andrew Sturm's Blog

I just wanted to take this moment to congratulate those of you who have won a FREE PAPERBACK copy of The Kirkwood Project! As of 11AM CST, your books are on their way via Media Mail. Included is a business card to use as either a bookmark or a minion proliferation device (MUAHAHAHAHA!).

Out of 509 entries, the following have been chosen by the gods of GoodReads:

Heidi K., of Auburn, AL

Stacy R., of Franklin, IN

Todd B., of Las Vegas, NV

Pamela B., of Pittsburg, PA

Marcy R., of Long Beach, CA

Christian A., of Fort Worth, TX

Misty S., of Newport, PA

Samantha M., of St. Paul, MN

Kelsey P., of Storrs, CT

Rachel M., of Poplar Bluff, MO

My fellow writers and those random people who read my blog,

Let me tell you all about the virtues of standing proudly in your community. This weekend (Friday, to be exact) I received my paperback copies of The Kirkwood Project, which is available for eBook on Nook and Kindle for $4.99 and a very beautiful 406-page Paperback on Amazon.com for $9.99. Of course, I made the normal runs to the store my mother works at, expecting to sell one or two copies, and found myself taking money from four and five different directions so long as I still had copies to give out. Never had I expected to work out my writing hand so much in one location! Let me tell you, too, fellow writer and/or random person who stumbled across this blog, this same thing continued on even when I went to the neighboring city of Hayti, Mo., to sell the books to those who had been eagerly awaiting them.

When I first started writing The Kirkwood Project (for sale…just kidding, I already said it once. Did I mention I have business cards?), I talked to my cousin and fellow writer Robin Burks who told me about how her book, Zeus, Inc., was to be published. She told me about that fabulous new thing called Smashwords and said that if I wrote a book, I could do this thing called self-publishing and they would do all the work FOR FREE in regards to making the book available for Nook and Kindle. It sounded far too good to be true, but wasn’t!

Down the line, Zach St. Cin (my co-worker and The Kirkwood Project cover designer/promo video editor/business card designer/etc) came to me with a design he had been thinking about. Before I knew it, I was staring at a rough copy of what was to later become the cover of my debut novel.

So, here I am at the end of one writing journey, having since bought Adobe InDesign CS6 in order to typeset and publish a solid copy of The Kirkwood Project for Paperback, sitting here with a pen and the paperback in my hand while somebody rushes to hand me their money in exchange for the thriller I have spent the last six months perfecting. At this moment, I feel a bliss like no other for in this moment, I am famous. Long before both the positive and negative reviews rain down, I am the most popular man in the entire world – at least in my head.

I know what you’re thinking. Am I rich after selling all these books? No. With the 10 copies for the GoodReads giveaway I’m giving away, I’m going to more or less break even. But, guess what? Forty people will have been exposed to my work. At the time of writing, twenty-six people have received a signed copy of my newest novel this weekend alone.

Writing is viral, you should recall. At the end of this run, I will have shone a brilliant light on forty people. If I have done my job properly as a writer, they will likewise spread the light.

Going into this movie, I knew that Rotten Tomatoes had given it a barely fresh 60%. Still, I had promised my girlfriend that I would take her to see it.

I loved the concept of having the main character be a writer who is in need of his next big hit. Since their house payments have become too much for them to handle, they move to a house in a sleepy town in Pennsylvania.

Immediately, we realize that the local law enforcement isn’t too keen on our writer. Turns out, his last novel revealed an oversight in a police investigation that allowed a killer to kill again.

Unfortunately, this was about as deep as the character development gets. It then shifted to what felt much like a cheap scare flick. Let’s just have him step in the frame a few times with a loud sound effect. Yeah, it was predictable, but I still jumped.

While the subject matter is often deeply disturbing, I didn’t feel that my money was wasted, but I’ve definitely seen better horror movies. Cabin in the Woods comes to mind.

What did you guys think?

I gave it a 3/5.

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This was one of those late-night musings with the coworkers. There is some disagreement on who exactly came up with what part of it, but I’ll go ahead and give the credits to Zach. I remember looking through the dictionary and coming to the word ‘ductile’ and I believe Zach mentioned a ‘quack in the floor’. But, the actual phrasing belongs to me. Therefore, I went ahead and posted it in the book as something Josh says to break up the awkward silence with Carla.

Throughout the book, I was forced to remain serious for a good portion of it, so it was nice to break away and just laugh out loud. The coolest thing about this post is that it’s the LAST one. Today is also the release date of The Kirkwood Project. So, hop over to your Amazon.com/BarnesandNoble.com/Smashwo... and get reading on it!

Stay tuned for plenty of other entertaining tidbits from me!

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This Swedish proverb had me laughing out loud the first instant I saw it, the next I was in awe of the amazing insight within these words. Like dynamite, there is such a large effect hidden within such simplistic words. It essentially means that no matter how you try and change it, it’s never going to be any different. How cool is that?

Off the top of my head, I’m trying to come up with a few variations.

Que sera sera. What will be will be.

C’est la vie. Such is life.

That’s just how it goes.

What else is there to say? Life is going to be what it’s going to be. It might treat like you a king or queen or it might treat you like the peasant. Sometimes you’re the bug and sometimes you’re the windshield. That’s just how it goes, ladies and gentlemen. Life is life is life.

No matter how you twist and turn, your ass is always gonna be in the back. So, look up and smile. You could always have it a lot worse than you do.

Thanks for tuning in!

Appraising Pages featured my work for the Month of the Macabre! Check them out!

Ever find yourself handcuffed to a bed? Perhaps you’re on the run from a mysteriously floating Coke machine. There may even be a werewolf running amok in your sleepy little town. Is there a chance that your cellar is a bridge to the land of long ago? Rest assured, however, that if there’s a rabid dog on your tail, or a clown in your gutter, you may be in Stephen King’s world (where rest is often banished).

For the past forty years, Stephen King has been providing us with quality horror, thriller, and science fiction. Just think, his first novel Carrie was tossed in the trash because Stephen had all but given up on the idea of writing a novel about a teenager with telekinetic powers. His wife dug it out of the trash, amidst the cigarette butts and the like, and read over it; she later encouraged him to continue with it. A common trope in fiction is that a flap of the butterfly’s wings could cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. Who’s to say whether or not Stephen would have been the Master of Horror if she hadn’t dug that single novel out of the trash?

But thank the lucky stars she did because in this month, the Month of the Macabre, we think of Stephen King and those just as mentally deranged as he. In a world where people struggle to be accepted, Stephen and his kind stepped up and began writing things that went strongly against the grain. He must have had one hell of a time in high school…

As for myself, I struggled to write that which really needed to come out because I was scared of what other people would think. I didn’t want people to avoid me, to think that I was some sort of freak; so, I wrote what I thought people wanted to read.

Guess what? No dice.

Turns out, if you want to feel empty and dead inside, write what you think people want to read. Like a husk of necrotic flesh at the typewriter, I played the dirge of the lost souls. Sweat poured from my brow and blood dripped from the beaten and bruised fingertips as I abused myself time and time again against the keys. At the end of the night, there would be no sounds other than the steady drip of blood into the bowels of the typewriter.

All night, I’d hear it.

Drip drip drip…

My fingers would scream up and down their neural passageways to my brain to the throb of my heartbeat.

Pain pain pain!

I, like many others, went through a period of self-mutilation. It was called writing what I thought people would enjoy reading. Every short story was a slash of the blade as it whistled through my flesh, rending where it hurts the most—my soul.

So, naturally, when I picked up my first Stephen King novel, Carrie (though I didn’t know at the time it was his first book or really who he was), I was moved. As a high school student in Freshman English, I was in need of guidance. My teacher asked me if I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up (it sounded like a silly question, considering I was fifteen years old and had already grown up, as all teenagers do) and I realized I had no idea.

For years afterward, I still had no idea.

So, I wrote. Did I write stories? Hell no, I wrote blog entries. I poured my heart out to people who didn’t care. I poured out my soul over the keyboard like gravy on the Thanksgiving turkey (which is coming next month, isn’t it? Delicious!) and got nothing. So, then I decided to write what I thought people might like.

Enter necrosis.

So, I commend Mr. King for always writing what his heart desired. As someone who has realized that writing has always come stupid easy to me, I can only pray that one day I get asked the question that a fan once asked Stephen.

“How do you write all these crazy things you write, Andrew? They’re brilliant! Your insight, your point of view, it’s just—it’s just amazing!” (I might have embellished the question just a bit).

To which I hope to respond, as King did, “One word a time.”

Because that’s life. One word at a time, one step at a time, one minute at a time.

Writing isn’t a destination, it’s a journey. While it feels like I might have digressed, I’m exactly on track, I assure you, reader. King has inspired me to step up and write that which is in my heart. So, I began writing short stories, but I didn’t do much with them. In fact, I didn’t even edit them. Why, I thought, no one is going to read them. So, that’s when it hit me. No one reads my writing because I don’t put any effort into them.

If I don’t take myself seriously, how can I ever expect anyone to do me the honor?

So, I looked into self-publishing. How fascinating! I could make my story an ebook, then people would take me seriously. But, what to write? Hm, maybe I could write something about zombies? Maybe I could write about werewolves. Then, it hit me, I was like the morphine addict just off of a methadone high—I was relapsing in the worst way. I was forcing ideas out based on what I thought other people might like to read.

So what do I do now?

I quit. That’s what I did.

One night while I was sleeping, I had a dream and it was The Kirkwood Project. The idea just blew me away. I’m not sure if I’ve had a more vivid dream in my entire life, actually. I saw the humans with the words carved with a dull knife into their backs. I felt Catherine’s anguish as she lay lost and lonely in the hospital bed wearing nothing but her johnny. One at a time, I was in each character’s flesh and I saw the whole story unfolding right before my eyes.

That was it. That’s all I needed. I got up and started writing the prologue (which later got deleted) and it ignited the wildfire in my soul from that moment forward. I had to write, I was damned near addicted to it. The words would just flow out of my mind, much as the twists and turns did too.

In The Kirkwood Project, I want to leave the reader with just one question throughout the entirety of the novel. Just who is holding all the strings? Who’s the puppet master? I want the reader to be so damned sure that he’s figured it all out just in time to get knocked off his feet at the next chapter.

So, what does my book have to do with Stephen King or the Month of the Macabre? It’s a psychological thriller with a hint of horror elements. Stephen King inspired me to step up out of the murky bile of normality and show the world just who I really am.

In the process of writing this novel, Stephen King really came through for me novel after novel. I followed his advice, his quotes, and watched almost every interview he did. Obsessed, much, you ask? Nonsense! I’d have to say it’s more like when you find that Santa Claus isn’t real, but that there’s a thing called credit cards, instead. CHRISTMAS!

I had to have it all. I had a greedy knowledge to study everything on and beneath the pages of his novels. The thing that helped me the most had to be the way he often breaks up his paragraphs into those

(what am I doing here again?)

parenthetical statements, which denote mental trains of thought. He also showed me that people really do have (or at least me) that critic—that loud, crotchety passenger in their heads. Hey there, Andy. You gonna tell them about me? When the reader is made aware of the internal thoughts of the character, it really helps them get under the skin. It’s brilliant, really.

So, on this, the month of All Hallow’s Eve, where things that go bump in the night will actually leap out from the entangled shrouds of darkness beneath the trees and tear at you madly while ribbons of flesh fly in any given direction, please exercise caution: stay inside, and read a book.

Speaking of books, head over to the GoodReads giveaway I’m hosting this month all the way up until the spookiest day of the month. You could be the lucky winner of a FREE PAPERBACK copy of The Kirkwood Project!

With that, I must bid you all adieu. But, remember—oh, will you?—that those which scare you the most don’t necessarily haunt you in the darkness. If ever you feel trapped, with your heart racing like a triphammer, you just may have entered the realm of Stephen King, where the governor’s phone won’t be ringing and the maniacal laughter won’t be outside your head.

-Andrew, author of The Kirkwood Project

(www.andrewsturmwriter.com)

This was one of my tongue-in-cheekiest quotes of the entire book. I, unfortunately, can only vaguely lament the time I spent in Calculus, but I can only imagine what students were feeling now. Even the brightest students of Kirkwood High School probably feel the same way about it. What makes this funny to me is that I used nothing but Calculus terms to describe a feeling of falling endlessly into the void. When I did Calculus, this was how I felt for most of the duration.

I’ll be the first one to tell you that if it’s anything beyond Algebra, my mind is just blown. But, that’s the cool thing about life. Not everyone is destined to be a mathematician. I grew up having an effortless knack for writing, but a buddy of mine ended up being a computer programmer. When I was a child, I feel like the roles were reversed. It’s just funny how things like that.

Look to your left and your right. Everywhere you will see things which make the American’s life easier. Let’s send emails instead of going to the post office and mailing off letters. Let’s ride in vehicles instead of walking or riding our bikes to work. Our hours are crammed with more shit than a compost factory, and for what? What are you getting accomplished this year that you weren’t getting accomplished back in the olden days? Unfortunately, I was not old enough back when times were simpler, but I often like to muse about how I would handle things differently. Don’t we all?

As someone who is desperately trying to get back to a healthy weight by walking 6-7 miles a week, I know the value of actually being active. If nothing else, it makes you feel better. The frontal lobe is more active in those who exercise. It doesn’t have to be a cataclysmic change, you know. Just start with something easy. Walk a few blocks and come back.

Remember: only you can prevent fat people.

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When I wrote this line, I thought about all the different stories I’ve heard people tell throughout the years. I’ve also heard and believed that many of those supposed love stories were nothing more than lustful confabulation, but that hasn’t stopped me from wanting to somehow find a way to keep that magic alive. In the sense that romantic movies try to persuade people into believing that true love can still happen, I try to find ways to create that kind of magic for people through the stories I tell.

In short, people need to know that love can still happen, especially when they least expect it. That’s the kind of magic I like to hold onto.

In a world where miracles are rare, and magic is almost always held imposter, I like to believe that love can still happen in the strangest places at the strangest times.

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Oh, it’s just a fact of life. Don’t cry for me now. Don’t go painting it all black, Mick. It happens to all of us. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, a train for us to take, a ticket that needs to be cashed in to win that glorious prize. There’s no two ways about it, mister; you’re gonna die. And that’s quite all right with me, I assure you; however, I don’t want to die today. To be honest, I’m not going to tell you a time in my life where I feel like I might be all right just giving up the ghost.

It would appear as though we only get one life. For some people, this is more than plenty, but not for me. I’ve got book ideas swimming around in my head twenty-four/seven. I’ve got things I want to do, places I want to see. I don’t wanna die until I say I’m ready. Of course, I’ve had those moments where I felt as if I might be an anomaly, like I might not ever die. But, I guess we’ll just have to see about that.

What about you guys? When are you ready to die?