The benefit of this kind of outlining is that you discover a story’s flaws before you invest a lot of time writing the first draft, and it’s almost impossible to get stuck at a difficult chapter, because you’ve already done the work to push through those kinds of blocks.

Trying to break into the horror market seemed natural.

For the novels I wrote before selling anything, I didn’t outline much. I had a vague idea of the story.

When I decided to take writing seriously, I did a lot of reading and analyzing of the books I liked, and came up with what I thought were pretty sound plotting and structure basics.

I got up with my wife, I sat down at the computer when she went to work, and I didn’t stop until she got home.

I’ve been reading horror since I was five years old.

I spent two months on the first draft, working 8 hours a day, five days a week.

On the other hand, now that I’m not dependent on fiction for my income, I’ve been writing more short stories despite the fact that there’s no real paying market for short horror other than Cemetery Dance.

In the first year, 1988, I wrote and sold 3 novels.

A couple of weeks after that, Zebra Books phoned with an offer, and I accepted.

When I was a teenager, I got into SF, quite heavily, and that too has had a major impact on my writing.

The benefit of this kind of outlining is that you discover a story’s flaws before you invest a lot of time writing the first draft, and it’s almost impossible to get stuck at a difficult chapter, because you’ve already done the work to push through those kinds of blocks.

During that first year, I felt guilty that my wife was out working bringing in all our income, while I was at home playing on the computer, so I made myself treat writing like a job.

I’ve devoted a lot of my time and effort during the past few years to developing my advertising copywriting business to the point of where I can support my family and don’t have to depend on writing fiction for my income.

Actually, the 14 novels were written over a period of just over 6 years.

Many of my short stories (all unpublished) were horror, and the novel I’d just finished was horror, too.

So, in effect, my first sale was actually two books.

The way I outline has changed quite a bit from when I first started writing.

Even the contemporary horror authors who have seriously influenced me are a disparate bunch.

For each book, the time is also broken up.

I’m a fan of short horror fiction… in fact, the most memorable horror I’ve read is of the short variety… but I have a hard time pulling it off myself.

So, I outlined a horror novel and started writing.