Cynus

Thanks! Hopefully you'll all feel that way when I make you cry later...

Unfortunately, it will get worse before it gets better. Yes, but even the greatest magicians in the world have yet to master it.

It will take a little while before we delve into the myth, but once we hit part 2, the mythology keeps going on to the end. Part 1 is mainly about setting the stage, parts 2-4 are the real meat of the story. I'm excited to hear your thoughts! Glad to have you along!

And you will shortly. I'm glad this grabbed your attention!

The next few hours passed in relative boredom, though Caleb's thoughts kept him occupied. The soothing sound of the falling rain served as a meditative cadence as he thought over his conversation with Ethan. Ethan wanted to talk about something serious, and he'd be coming over to talk about it, whatever 'it' was. Caleb could relate and was starting to realize he had little reason not to do the same, to make his secret known. He lay back on his bed, repeatedly tossing a baseball up in the

1-1 A Small Pebble High school was over. Despite everything bad which had ever happened to Caleb Nield inside those walls, what he wanted most was to live through it all again. He wasn't ready to say goodbye, not to the school nor the town, and most of all to Ethan. Caleb's parents often spoke of their high school days with nostalgic romanticism, and he'd expected to feel that way eventually but not just two days after graduation. Nevertheless, Caleb had an instant longing for those days,

Death is better left undisturbed, but some people don't know any better. After the death of his best friend, Ethan, Caleb Neild ventures into The Underworld to seek Ethan's soul and bring him back to the world of the living. He requests the help of the mythical Orpheus, bard turned psychopomp, to find The One Who Rules Beneath and must cross the dreaded six rivers of the afterlife.

A friend of mine is heading to Saint Jean Pieds de Port next summer, so he'll be in your neck of the woods. I'll be doing the same thing at some point in my life.

I was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. I left for a couple of years to live in South Korea, and loved it there. I would totally move back, but my number one place to go would be Kyrgyzstan. I realize that's a bit out of the box, but have you met me? Central Asia is one of the most culturally significant places in the world. You have the Persian Empire, the Mongolian Conquest... Man, the stuff that happened there! Add to it the nomads with awesome food, horse-riding and eagle-taming, and a climate with all four seasons each as beautiful as the next... Best. Place. Ever.

Have you heard about the LGBT film festival in Uganda? You know, the place where LGBT rights are at an all time low? if not, you should click this link to learn more. They're doing some really cool things! http://www.queerkiff.com/

Thanks! It'll be an adventure for sure.

It's here, it's finally here! "Rivers of the Dead" looks amazing with its brand new cover and renovation to this new-fangled age of digital media. That's right, it's available as both a paperback and as an ebook, and here's four reasons why you should consider buying it: 1) It's a story about love, about sacrifice and overcoming grief—it'll pull on your heart over and over again as you journey with Caleb as he journeys to The Underworld to reclaim his friend's soul. 2) The mythological perspective is fresh, even if it returns us to the classic Greek myth of Orpheus. He may be ancient, but he's traded his lute for a guitar and a wickedly sarcastic attitude. You'll love him. 3) If you like my stories, you'll like this one, too. If you trust me to tell a good story, you'll definitely like this one. 4) If for no other reason, I'm taking the plunge in October and quitting my day job to become a full-time writer. Your support simply by purchasing this book will do more for me than you can possibly imagine. Whether you decide to pick up a copy or not, know that I appreciate you getting this far. I love being part of this community, and I appreciate all the support you've given me over the years. That being said, there's a link here I hope you'll check out: Ebook: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0742J15QF/ref=s9u_simh_gw_i1?ie=UTF8&fpl=fresh&pd_rd_i=B0742J15QF&pd_rd_r=7TC92AN6F77Y97R4E8G1&pd_rd_w=DRFPb&pd_rd_wg=BkBqf&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=&pf_rd_r=XBV8WT4VN04MG2K0HAEK&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=781f4767-b4d4-466b-8c26-2639359664eb&pf_rd_i=desktop Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Rivers-Dead-Samuel-D-Roe/dp/1521885354/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

An update: First, I appreciate everyone who read and showed your support. You're all wonderful, and I'm glad to be a part of this community. Secondly, Wattpad responded and said that they'd disabled the content, so I can breathe a sigh of relief. I even managed to get some writing done today.

This was a message to my Patrons, which means there will be some information in here which will likely make no sense to you, but I wanted this to be known. This last weekend was hell. The only worse weekends I've ever had involved loved ones dying, just to give you a measure of perspective. Over the course of 48 hours, my already bad mood for the week (because the week was fairly shitty, too) went full depression.There's a lot going on, but I'm only going to tell you about the two things which are affecting me the most, because they also affect you, and make me question a lot of things.First, we'll set the stage a bit...On Friday night, I had to do inventory at work. This kept me there fairly late, though I was home before Midnight. I had volunteered to work the opening shift the next day, despite knowing I'd be there late on Friday, so having only a six hour window for sleep was on me. I normally can function well enough on 5 hours of sleep, so I wasn't too worried about it, but I hadn't accounted for insomnia and anxiety to keep me up well past 3:00 am... So, I started Saturday on two hours of sleep, which has probably compounded this whole thing, but it is what it is... When I walked out to my car on Saturday morning, I found out it had been burglarized. This is hardly a new experience for me. I live in a bad area and my back doors don't lock. There's really not much I can do about it other than try to avoid leaving anything valuable in my car. Well, I had three copies of "From the Cup of the Worthless" in my car, and these were stolen from my trunk. Why they stole these and not the other books in my car I can only guess, since selling an unknown self-published book can't be easy for a thief, especially since it's difficult for me, the author, to do. And so I can only speculate, and that speculation doesn't take me anywhere good. What will they do to my books once they find out they can't sell them? Throw them away? Deface them in rage? Burn them out of spite? My art is in the possession of unsavory characters, and I think this is the closest I'll ever come to knowing what it feels like to have a child get kidnapped. I realize it's probably not even close, but my books are my children... and I feel devastated. That set the tone for Saturday, and I did not have a good day in any sense of the word. I finally slept again on Saturday night, but it was restless, and full of dreams I'd rather not dwell on. I tried to have a good day on Sunday. I tried to do a lot of things to take my mind off of everything, and then I finally laid down for a nap, but before I did, I decided to check my email. Which is when I found out that someone had stolen one of my stories and put it up on Wattpad, claiming to be the original author. Thankfully a reader noticed several of this individual's posted stories did not belong to him and he decided to investigate all of them. He wasn't familiar with my work, but he managed to track it down anyway. After investigating the matter and contacting WattPad, I was drained. I'd planned to work on chapter 6 of "The Pious Road to Perdition", but I couldn't find the energy. I couldn't find the energy this morning, either. In fact, I seem to have even less enthusiasm than I did yesterday. I am emotionally drained, which is cancer to art. I have never felt so violated in my life. I am more depressed than I have ever been, a feat I would have thought impossible before it happened. And I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know when or even IF I'll be able to write again, especially something as emotional as "The Pious Road to Perdition". And this sucks, and I realize it sucks for you, too, but I don't have any other answer for you. This is breaking me. That's all there is to say.

Sure. Just message me.

I have been experiencing literally the same thing for about a year and a half. I just wrote a blog post about this, actually: I hope my little insights into my own problem might be able to offer you at least another perspective. If you ever want to sit down and have a chat about the particulars of writing motivation, maybe we could lift each other up?

Writing has been difficult for the past year and a half. It's not from a shortage of ideas. I'm drowning in ideas right now, and I think if I could sell ideas I'd never have to work again. But I haven't been able to write most of these ideas myself. It's been a struggle ever since I finished "From the Cup of the Worthless". At first I thought it was because I was depressed, or that I'd started to overextend my use of similar themes. I managed to pump out "Fearless" really quickly, and I hoped I was back on track, but then a dozen more false starts brought me back to nothing. I eventually started "Weightless", which turned out the be the most difficult story I'd ever written. I dedicated it to my long-used muse as a sort of going away present, vowing to stay away from gay teen high school romances from that point forward. I thought I had a clean slate, and with that I'd have the ability to make a fresh start with all the ideas floating around in my head. And then I didn't write another novel until March, despite another dozen false starts which seemed to indicate I had something to write. I was in a relationship at the time, a great, amazing, uplifting relationship, which is when I started to get it through my head that maybe I could only write from a place of negativity, that I could only write if I was unhappy. I cloistered myself, dropping everything but work and writing, and I wrote a 70,000 word novel (which I'm currently submitting to literary agents, which is why no one has seen it) in 9 days, the fastest I've ever written anything. I thought I'd figured out the cure, that if all I did was focus on something I could get it done. But here I am, three months later, and, you may have guessed, another dozen false starts in my data banks. And it's really starting to suck. Today I had a bit of a realization, brought on by a conversation with another artist friend. What if it's not the muse, like I assumed during "Weightless", but the message that I'm struggling with? I've always tried to communicate a certain theme. What if I feel I've already explored that theme in all the ways I can conceive of through writing so far? I think I'm on the right track. I think I know what I need to do. I need to figure out what it is I want to communicate through my art, and I think everything else will fall back into place. It's time for a little self-diplomacy.

It was pretty awful, which is why I'm glad to see him take such a stand. That very reason you mention is why I initially avoided him like the plague.

So, I only really learned this recently, but I think this is one of the coolest things ever. Tyler Glenn, the lead singer of the band Neon Trees, came out of the closet a few years ago, but only a short time ago he finally left his childhood faith, Mormonism. He then created a solo album dedicated to both leaving the church and his coming out process. The whole album is titled "Excommunication" and I highly recommend it, but here's a sample I think a lot of us could relate to.

I don't know if this was already posted before, but there's a new short film coming out soon and it's awesome.

I guess the new setup of GA didn't notify me of this comment, because I surely would've come back to it and replied sooner than this, haha! Silas is, in many ways, the person I both aspire to be and the person I am when i'm wounded. He's a very complex creature born out of my own psyche, and I love him more than most of the characters I've created, if not all. 'Best' story is in the eye of the beholder, of course. My favorite is, and may always be, "From the Cup of the Worthless", but "The Navigator" will always occupy a special place in my heart. It's the first novel I wrote where I truly felt that I understood what writing a novel was really about. This story flowed better than anything I had ever written up to that point (I wrote it in a month), and it astounded me how effortless it could be when I truly connected with the muse. It's rare when it works that way for me, although it has happened since (the aforementioned "From the Cup of the Worthless" for example) I'm so grateful for the following this story has generated (despite its flaws, heh. I think they're loveable flaws, though), and I'm glad it continues to attract new readers and bring readers back to it again and again. Thanks again for this support!

That was exactly what I needed today. I don't know how to thank you. I've been running up against this wall of trying to find a literary agent for my newest novel and, even though I expected them, the rejections are kind of soul-crushing. It was nice to have something as validating as this show up today, and I am truly grateful for it. Thank you.

I'm glad it kept you going. Thanks for reading! Thanks! Yeah, when I decided to write about a politician, it was really hard not to aim some harpoons somewhere... Heh. Yay! I never know how well I've written suspense until people read it, since I know what's going to happen when I'm writing it, haha! Thanks for reading. It might be awhile before I post something longer, I've been a bit off in my writing lately, but rest assured, I haven't forgotten about you all. Heh. I wanted the alien angle to dangle in front of everyone as a feint so I could slip the real deal under your noses. Hopefully it worked. Who knows? Maybe I'll write these characters into some epic space battle some day? Thanks for reading! Thanks for reading it! I'm glad to hear it drew you in. If I'm bringing in politics, I'm not going to pull any punches. I considered mentioning something about HIV/AIDS, but didn't end up going that route. I wanted to create a politician who would feel human, which is not something I see very often in the politicians we have here, especially not at the top. Hopefully that helped make him relatable. What about a gay cheeto? Thanks for reading! So, quick explanation: this story was actually a response to The Grid and Dice Game. I failed to get my story done in time, missing the deadline by a couple of days. I posted this story unpublished (unchecking both boxes) but it published itself anyway (one of the bugs we're still working out with the new system), which is the entire reason you're reading it. It wasn't supposed to be released until April with the other late stories. After forcibly unpublishing it several times, we decided to just leave it up. My prompt was "A lonely duck who can't shift, Roswell, NM, and discovers an email to a cheating partner from the bit on the side" Hope you enjoyed it!

The whir of the electronic wheelchair was deafening to Jared Bourdais as he rolled himself off the plane and onto the tarmac. He could feel their eyes on him, the grim-faced ghoulish bureaucrats certain he'd soon leave office, especially with this new tragedy to face. They'd called him a lame duck the moment he took office when he'd only had a cane, or at least the opposition had. Now he was certain all of them did. He'd contracted DH-20, a virus so vile it didn't even have a proper name ye