Writing What Hurts

Updates, New Paperback, New Audio

Author

David Niall Wilson
September 28, 2025

What’s Happening

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Every aspect of life is currently crazy in one way or another. Still studying crazily for a certification that I should have gotten years ago… I know this stuff, but tests are tricksy, and I’m a little out of practice. Major changes happening at the day job, including my own job being in full or partial jeopardy starting in January.

Thankfully, Trish is doing great after her surgery. This Thursday we have the follow-on appointment and after that things will start to slowly slide back into whatever the new normal is. When I finish putting this newsletter together, I’ll get back to the very end of the novel in progress and hopefully by tomorrow, I’ll either have a first draft, or that minus a wrap-up chapter. The big action / ending is in progress now, and I can’t stop thinking about it. That, by the way, is much preferable to not being able to figure it out.

Last week I ran a contest asking for three-word poetry prompts, but I put it too deep in the newsletter and no one made it that far, or something. I got two sets. I’m going to let that continue for a while in the hope I gather more, so, here’s the deal. Send three-word prompts to [email protected] and I will write a poem that uses the three words. Please don’t just try to think of three words that are hard to put in a poem, because I can still do that, but the likelihood of that poem being god are low.

Here is another quick example of a prompt, and poem, from a different time I did this to give you an idea.

gargoyle, sarcophagus, saxophone

He only played for angels,
The dead,
And for those who listened
Through the cracks between worlds.
His horn was silver, polished and clean.
He had bought the reeds from an old woman
At a rummage sale,
Purported to be crafted
Of wood harvested
From the tree of Good and Evil
But priced to sell.
He leaned into the steps
Leading up to a raised sarcophagus
Framed by huge, brooding gargoyles.
The moon hung between,
Hovered as if suspended on a string
To light the way back
From somewhere far away.
He slipped the notes into Birdland
And black poppies grew
In the grass at his feet.
Dark, winged things fluttered
And danced,
But he paid them no mind.

They had taken him to a club once,
A night-bird dive
Drenched in guilt and lust,
Exhaling anger and inhaling longing.
They had asked him to play,
Seated in a pool of light on a darkened stage.
The angels had peered in at him
Through shuttered windows.
The dead had clawed and scratched
At the walls, and the floor.
Staring faces confronted him with
Envy.
Hate.
Greed.
And he’d gone silent.

He only played for angels,
The dead,
And for those who listened
Through the cracks between worlds.
In that club, the cracks
Had been doors,
The dead had ordered whiskey,
And the angels clung to the shadows.
The reed
Crafted of wood
From the Tree of Good, and evil
Would not take
The vibration from his lips…
The horn could not sing.
In that bar at the crossroads,
There was only Evil,
And though he’d sensed the moon,
Shining far above,
He had not felt its call.
It was not the music of the Angels,
But only – of their fall.

I am still auctioning off books from my personal collection with many more to come. None of our kids is really a reader except Katie, and she leans more toward Poppy Z. Brite than the older authors. I would rather these find a good home and honestly, the shelves look crazy with the ridiculous number of books weighing them down.

What’s New?

The paperback of Etched Deep & Other Dark Impressions is live now. This collection brings together fourteen tales of madness, horror, fantasy, zombies, and dark magic, as well as fourteen original poems. Spanning more than two decades of my career, the stories offer a wide range of glimpses into my  creative process.

Contents include the short stories: Through an Eyeglass, Darkly, Fear of Flying, Moving On, One off from Prime, Headlines, Wayne's World, Redemption, Swarm, The Purloined Prose (With Patricia Lee Macomber), Shift, Pretty Boys in Blue and Long Hair Dangling, To Strike a Timeless Chord, Etched Deep, and Unique. Also included are the poems: End of Days, The Acropolis, Clamdigger, Cuttlefish Squeezings, Thanatology, A Poem of Adrian, Gray, The Fishmonger, Revelation, Loch Ness, Mirrored Hearts, Dark Man, Banished, End of Days, & Longhaired Puppies.

New Audio

My short story “If You Seek for El Dorado,” featuring Edgar Allan Poe is in this one, just released.

Blackest Knights – Performed by Reuben Ashcroft – AUDIO SAMPLE HERE

Honor is just a word.

Throughout fiction, there have always been heroes who have fallen from grace. Champions of honor, decency, and order who have become villains through some traumatic event or a deep personal flaw. Blackest Knights is a collection of 19 tales by some of independent fantasy's best authors that follow a collection of those heroes who fell to temptation. From tales of bloody-handed hypocrites to space pirates, you'll find some truly fascinating works within.

Contains fiction by: David Niall Wilson, C. T. Phipps, James Alderdice, M. L. Spencer, Paul Lavender, Ulff Lehman, A. M. Justice, Matthew Johnson, Frank Martin, Allan Batchelder, Martin Owton, Richard Writhen, Jesse Teller and Michael Suttkus.

From Writing What Hurts

I remember clearly a cruise I took on board the USS Guadalcanal, one of the ships I served on in the US Navy. I had two computers at the time – I took the older one with me to the ship. It was an old 386 with Word Perfect 6.0 loaded and ready. Along with that computer I had a Hewlett-Packard Deskjet 500 – the sturdiest, most reliable printer I have ever owned. I took a drawer full of ink cartridges, and a case of paper. I remember sitting down before I left and figuring out that, at 250 words per page, there would be half a million words printed if I used that entire case. I came very close.

I was the Leading Petty Officer of the Electronics shop during that period. I didn't have an office of my own, but I had a UHF transmitter room that I sort of took ownership of. Most of the equipment in that room was mine to maintain, and there was a workbench that would hold my computer. I also had a large "boom box" and a box of CDs. Those became the soundtrack for several novels; not all written on that cruise, but at the very least revised and completed. I had floppy disks with all my books and stories, and I worked constantly. The ship served dinner between 4:00 and about 5:30. After that, every night that I did not have duty, I was in that room, typing away, until around 11:00 PM – sometimes later.

Depeche Mode and Concrete Blonde were my friends. I memorized the first two Crash Test Dummies CDs and learned to love a band called Ten Inch Men, whose album Pretty Vultures is still one of my all-time favorites. The singer from that band, Dave Coutts, went on to sing for "Talk Show," along with members of the Stone Temple Pilots. I met Dave, and several other members of Ten Inch Men, when they found my review and comments on their music in my Live Journal online. Again – another story.

The point is the words. You just don't see how they add up until you let yourself think about it. Most professional writers I know claim about 2,000 words per day of output. In those days on the Guadalcanal, I averaged 3500-5000 a day and had days that topped 10k. These days I fall in the 1500 -2000-word range, but here's the thing.

Back before that whole site imploded and became a scandal, one of my favorite things was participating in the National Novel Writing Month challenge every November. 50,000 words in thirty days. When you say it that way it seems like a horrifying challenge. When you break it down to the reality – 1,667 words a day – you see that a lot of working writers write more than that every month. If you add in what I do for the Crossroad Press site, and the blogs I write to promote my work, I'm sure I'm still doing the 5k a day shuffle myself.

So, in reality…if you concentrated, you should be able to churn out 3-6 novels a year with some regularity, although broken up by revisions, short stories, essays, reviews, etc. Writers write, and though there are certainly times this is less true than at others, a steady stream of words produces a prodigious output over time. I have been at this a very long time and have determined that I do not – at this point – want to know how many words I have written. In fact, I cringe at the thought of it and want to run away, pulling out what little hair remains to me and go screaming off into the night. I've written so much, and yet, I feel as if there is so much still to accomplish. There are so many stories waiting, and now they are piling up against the end gate as I plow into them, trying to fight my way through in the allotted space of a lifetime.

You can get buried in the words. You can get lost in worrying over the numbers. In the end, those that can't be held back will escape your fingers, and your personal mountain of words will grow. I've decided to make mine tall enough to touch the sky, beautiful enough to attract climbers and wildlife, and solid enough to withstand time. Foolish, simple dreams that make me smile, and keep me working. I have always loved the mountains.

What I’m Reading

On the Kindle I’m reading The Works of Vermin, an ARC for the upcoming novel by Hiron Ennes. I have only started this book, but I am getting strong early China Mieville King Rat vibes from the world, the elegance of the prose. It’s drawn me in fully in only a couple of short chapters.

I just finished the anthology Long Division: Stories of Social Decay, Societal Collapse, and Bad Manners and my review is live on Goodreads.

About 40% done with The Essential Bukowski: Poetry

What I’m Watching

Movies – just watched Drive Back – This is a surreal, dark, intricate film. It’s not in any way a normal slasher, or horror movie. I’d give it five stars for sure, and I didn’t even know it existed until we stumbled on it. We also watched and very much enjoyed Megan 2.0. Not what I was afraid it would be, another creepy doll movie, but heading directly into I Robot territory.

Still watching Franklin & Bash, Peacemaker, and Only Murders in the Building.

What I’m Listening to

VEIL – by Jonathan Janz – Performed by John Pirhalla (who reminds me a bit of the late Frank Muller). A few chapters in… very creepy stuff, and more to follow once I have gotten deeper into the story.

Completed my listen of MOONFLOW by Bitter Karella – Performed by Venus Rose Fischer. My review is live on Goodreads.

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