Once Upon a Midnight Erie

Greetings! It’s a pretty big leap to go from a June blog post to a mid‑October one. There’s been so much happening behind the scenes—so much, in fact, that my posting schedule went completely ary and then vanished altogether. I apologize for that. This project is mostly a one‑person rodeo, and I am that person. Luckily, I’ve had the honor of working with a developmental editor in a year‑long process that helped shape Once Upon a Midnight Erie into a coherent and (hopefully) a

The first round of edits is officially complete, and my beta readers have begun their descent into the story. It’s a strange feeling — handing over a world I’ve been shaping in the dark — but it’s time.

"Once Upon a Midnight Erie" consists of twenty-six chapters. The editing process, a meticulous endeavor where every word and detail is crucial, and each scene must be effective, has been underway for nearly nine months. As I wrap up the edits for Chapter Twenty, I'm delighted to start editing Chapter Twenty-One before the new year. At twenty-one, my book is metaphorically old enough to celebrate the new year. Cheers!

It's not as if a book writes itself. Yet it does, in a way. It arrives unexpectedly as a hazy idea. Capturing the idea and putting it into words usually is a process and what I end up with is an initial draft that's cryptic and overly or underly written. Next comes the fine tuning, sculpting the words into an understandable form, painting pictures and stories using language. After that, more editing, and adding, and subtracting, and clarifying. And along with myself and my ed

On one special day out of every year, if you stand in just the right spot on Edgewater beach and watch, the peak of the Terminal Tower will pierce the rising sun. And if the day ever comes when the sun bleeds, it will herald the moment when the dead shall rise.

What if OUME could come to life? What would it look like?