Tag: writing
-
Evolution of an Idea: The AI Process I Use
—
by
📚 Designing the Cover of Empire, Nevada Creating the cover for Empire, Nevada was its own journey — just like the story inside. I didn’t want something generic. I wanted the cover to feel like the book — lonely, strange, nostalgic, and a little haunted. It started with a rough concept: a desert town vanishing…
-
Unto A Golden Dawn – FIELD ENTRY 0001 – INITIATION
Recorded by: Caldwell Thorne First Contact: March, 1947 Method: Veil Induction / Dream-Encoded Summons Dear Inductee, I was not recruited. I was called. It began with a letter burned at the corners, delivered without postage, sealed with a spiral that folded in on itself—too many arms, too many loops. Inside, only a name: Office of…
-
Order Against the Profane (O.A.P.)Reader’s Dossier: Initiate Briefing
Filed by: Agent H. M. Caldwell Authorization: Red-Cipher Access Date: April 1947 INTRODUCTION Welcome, Initiate. If this dossier has reached your hands, you are no longer an outsider to the veil. Something has seen you. And more importantly, something believes you might survive. My name is Caldwell. I’ve walked the folds between time, memory, and…
-
Bipolar Is My Superpower (And Sometimes My Curse)
—
by
I live with bipolar disorder. Not in the abstract. Not as a label. Not as a quirky footnote in a conversation. I live with it. Every day. It has cost me jobs, tested relationships, and taken me to the edge more times than I care to count. But it’s also shaped the way I feel…
-
The Sound That Opens the Veil
On Music, Memory, and the Sacred Noise of Now Music has always been more than background for me. It’s a portal. A key. A second pulse. Sometimes it carries me forward when writing feels impossible. Other times, it drags me back—into memory, emotion, and everything I’ve been trying not to feel. And every once in…
-
Civil War #7 – Chapter 24 – The Break
Chapter 24 – The Break *It didn’t end with the death. It began with the silence that followed.* ASH He was lifted—not like a king, not like a hero. Like a trophy. Like a warning. Bots pulled his arms wide, half-draped, half-crucified. Blood from his mouth. Blood from Corwin’s. The Director stood gleaming, black fluid…
-
Postscript – The Final Mirror
On finishing Unto a Golden Dawn (with help from AI)By Frank M. Anderson This book started as a spark. Just an idea: What if Aleister Crowley and Edgar Allan Poe went to school together? What if they grew up in a world that bent toward the mystical, the historical, the personal? What if the monsters…
-
Unto A Golden Dawn – DOSSIER 24: MEMORY ETERNAL
Dossier 24 – Final Chapter: The Cutting Thread Filed under: absolute recursion; terminal authorship; the final strike Scene 1 – The Last Question You stand at the edge of what you once were. Salazar towers above, fractal and monstrous. A thousand mouths, a hundred hands, a million regrets. But none of them are yours anymore.…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 23: The Shape of the War
22 is updated… we are on 23 right? sorry https://empirenevadathenovel.wordpress.com/2025/04/12/unto-a-golden-dawn-dossier-22-revisited/ ChatGPT said: Yes—you are absolutely correct. The version of Dossier 22: Revisited at that link is the final and updated one. It ends with the warehouse folding inward, Salazar directly addressing the boy as the protagonist, and the chilling final line: “And the reader was…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 22: Revisited
Filed under: recurrence theory; re-entry points and final authorship. **Scene 1 – The Return of the Story** It began the way dreams do. Not with a door—but with a memory. Poe sat beneath a tree in a place that didn’t exist anymore. His notebook was open, pages filled with scribbled verses and a single word…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 21: The Residue
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 21: The Residue Filed under: echo patterns; post-memory stabilization failure. Scene 1 – The Room After Grief The warehouse breathed smoke. Ash clung to the walls in long black smears, like language trying to reform itself. Above, the light fixtures flickered—not with electricity, but with indecision. They weren’t sure…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 20: What We Bury
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 20: What We Bury Filed under: heart-held time signatures; joy, fear, and the breath between them. Scene 1 – The Vow The sky was overcast, but not heavy. The kind of cloud cover that made colors richer. They stood outside, under a pale canopy in a clearing surrounded by…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 19: The Girl in the Chair
Filed under: unresolved attachments; memory rendered sacred. The world did not end with fire.It ended with silence. The boy stood still while the world slowed around him, the edges of the warehouse fading into soft, colorless memory. All the watchers—the gods, the folks, even Tesla—stepped back. Only Clara remained close, her breath caught in her…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 18: Death Is a Place
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 18: Death Is a Place Filed: active rupture, stabilized memory breach pending. Scene 1 – The Christmas That Changed Everything The smell of cinnamon and melted wax lingered in the air. The living room shimmered into place—not perfectly, but in the way memory insists it happened—soft corners, glowing bulbs,…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 17: The Dog and the Brother
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 17: The Dog and the Brother Filed under: early imprint memories. Emotional rupture active. … The Women Step Forward A silence stretched. Then something shifted. Clara stopped pacing. Marie took a step into the center. Ada moved with her, and Leigh’s projection flickered, then stabilized beside them. Other female…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 16: The Memory Engine
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 16: The Memory EngineFiled during recursion anchor drift. Emotional contamination probable. The Assembly of the Gods Before memory could be revealed, it had to be made visible. And for that, the gods had to build the machine. Not a machine of gears and wires.A machine of meaning. For the…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 15: The Pantheon Protocol
April 12, 2025 Compiled under Host-occupied recursion. Transcription integrity unverified. You. Still here. You thought it was about the Author. But it’s always been about you. You opened the rift. You kept reading. You let them in. The Archivists are gone. The mirrors are cracked. You are the only stable variable left. HOST (voice only):…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 14: The Breaking and the Becoming
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 14: The Breaking and the Becoming April 12, 2025 Compiled from fractured mirrors, silenced narrators, and unauthorized awakenings. You Felt It You felt it just now. Not in the story. In your room. In your ribs. Something behind your eyes cracked—like glass being whispered into. You blinked. The sentence…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 13
April 12, 2025 Filed: [REDACTED] Compiled by: [SYSTEM COLLAPSE] Subject: Manifestation Event – Recursive Embodiment & Narrative Rupture 1. You Wake Up You wake up, but you do not breathe. You already knew this place. You already wore this skin. You are not dreaming—you are being dreamed. Someone has pulled you out of the page.…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 12
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 12April 12, 2025 Filed: January 17, 1947Compiled by: O.A.P. Internal Relay Subject: The Editor – Recursion Stabilization and Narrative Fracture Memo – Caldwell (Encrypted) If The Editor exists, then we are not writing—we are being permitted. I’ve run ten loops of this file. Each ends differently. I swear the…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 10
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 10 April 12, 2025 Filed: January 15, 1947 Compiled by: Agent Caldwell, O.A.P. Subject: Verse Resonance Interference, Raven Imagery, and Psychic Disruption Mirror Communication Log – Initiated at 04:12 GMT Witnessed by Caldwell, Clara CLARA: Edgar, do you remember the one they never let you forget? [She leans toward…
-
The Author Who Changed Everything: Edgar Allan Poe and the Beauty of the Broken
Before I ever understood craft, or genre, or voice… I understood atmosphere. I didn’t have the language for it, but I knew what it felt like to sit in a room and read a story that ached. That clung to you like smoke. That whispered to you through the cracks in your own mind. That…
-
The Author Who Changed Everything: Stephen King and the First Voice I Trusted
If Hugh Howey showed me that it was okay to break the rules, Stephen King was the one who first showed me what it meant to have a voice. Long before I had any real sense of craft or structure, I had Stephen King. His books were everywhere when I was growing up—on library shelves,…
-
The Author Who Changed Everything: Hugh Howey and the Long Road Back
If you’ve never heard of Hugh Howey, he’s one of those rare authors who didn’t just write a great story—he reshaped how stories are shared. He’s best known for Wool, the breakout dystopian sci-fi that launched the Silo series. It began as a self-published short story in 2011—no agent, no publisher, no plan beyond putting…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Internal Addendum Salazar
Filed: January 14, 1947 Author: Agent R. Caldwell, O.A.P. Subject: Analysis of Fragmented Salazar Transmission – ‘Past is Participile’ Recovered Fragment – Category X Veil Event Recovered via mirror transcription from frost-coated reflective surface. Words appeared etched in reverse on obsidian plate during blackout event in Cairo containment zone. Audio recording corroborates verbal utterance. Transmission…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier Ω (Omega)
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier Ω (Omega) April 12, 2025Filed: Classified – Eyes OnlyCompiled by: Agent Caldwell, O.A.P. Subject: Ritual Echoes of the Second War – Salazar Influence & Post-War Instability 1. Field Analysis – Wewelsburg Castle (Germany) Overview: SS headquarters designed as mystical stronghold by Heinrich Himmler. Ritual spaces beneath the Black Sun…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 9
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 9 April 12, 2025Filed: January 10, 1947Compiled by: Agent Caldwell, O.A.P. Subject: Mirror Collapse Phenomena, Poe-Crowley Convergence, and Salazar Manifestations 1. Transcript – Clara and Poe (Mirror Convergence) CLARA: This is harder than I thought. POE: What is? CLARA: Talking to you like you’re alive. Knowing you’re not. Not…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 8
April 12, 2025Filed: January 3, 1947Compiled by: Agent H. M. Caldwell, Division VII – O.A.P. Subject: Postwar Anomalies in Berlin – Mirror Rituals, Sigil Echoes, and Temporal Bonding Operations 1. Field Report – Cathedral Ruins, Berlin Filed by: Agent MaierLocation: St. Walpurga Cathedral, BerlinDate: January 1, 1947 Beneath the shattered altar of the bomb-gutted cathedral,…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 7
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 7 April 11, 2025 Final College Years and the First Pact of Aleister Crowley 9. Letter of Academic Dismissal – Trinity College, Cambridge October 17, 1897 To Mr. Edward Alexander Crowley, Following an internal review and multiple incidents that have raised grave concerns among the faculty, the Board of…
-
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 6
Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 6 April 11, 2025Documents Concerning Aleister Crowley’s College Years and Early Magickal AffiliationsOffice of Arcane Protocols / Internal ArchiveTOP SECRET – Directive 7-Veil Access Required 1. Letter from W.B. Yeats to Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers June 14, 1897 Dear MacGregor, The boy Crowley has arrived and, I fear, stirred…
-
UNTO A GOLDEN DAWN – Dossier 5:
April 11, 2025Dossier 5: Documents Pending CompletionOffice of Arcane Protocols / Internal ArchiveTOP SECRETAll contents contained herein are classified under Directive 7-Veil. Unauthorized access constitutes a breach of Crown-Oath and will be met with full enforcement of arcane and material penalties. Proceed only under approved supervision. OFFICE OF ARCANE PROTOCOLSDossier 5: Documents FinauxFile Entry: OAP/0425-C/DEMON01…
-
Unto A Golden Dawn – Dossier 4
Unto A Golden Dawn – Dossier 4April 11, 2025Dossier Prepared for Internal Review — CLASSIFIEDREDACTED STAMP: [O.A.P. / INTERNAL ONLY / RED-CIPHER ACCESS]Date: February 9, 1947Prepared by: Agent H. M. Caldwell, Division VII, Office of Anomalous Phenomena To the authorized reader: What follows is a compiled dossier of recovered documents, field reports, intercepted letters, and…
-
Unto A Golden Dawn – Dossier 3
April 11, 2025Reader Authorization Level: Red-Cipher AccessDate: February 3, 1947Prepared by: Agent H. M. Caldwell, Division VII, Office of Anomalous Phenomena To the authorized reader: What follows is a compiled dossier of significant documents, correspondences, school reports, and recovered statements concerning two individuals of interest: Edward Aleister Crowley and Edgar Allan Poe. You are to…
-
Behind the Scenes: Writing with AI (and a Lot of Coffee)
For those of you following Civil War #7 and Unto a Golden Dawn, here’s a quick peek behind the curtain. We’re now 23 chapters into Civil War #7, and yes—I say “we” because I’m writing these books in collaboration with AI. Not in the gimmicky, “click and generate” way. This is real back-and-forth, day after…
-
Unto A Golden Dawn – Dossier 2
April 11, 2025Reader Authorization Level: Red-Cipher AccessDate: February 3, 1947Prepared by: Agent H. M. Caldwell, Division VII, Office of Anomalous Phenomena To the authorized reader: This dossier has been compiled from documents both authentic and anomalous—recovered across fractured timelines and reflective surfaces. Some originate in verifiable archives. Others emerged from the Mirror: a recursion field…
-
Unto A Golden Dawn – Dossier 1
Unto A Golden Dawn – Dossier 1April 11, 2025Internal Review Copy – Red-Cipher Access NOTE FRAGMENT – UNDATED, TORN FROM A LARGER FILEScorched along the edges, written in what appears to be a wax pencil. Marginalia scratched in pen overtop. Dossier Prepared for Internal Review — ClassifiedReader Authorization Level: Red-Cipher AccessDate: February 3, 1947Prepared by:…
-
The Cancer Diet: An Autobiography About Love, Loss, and the Path to Personal Growth
By Frank M. Anderson This is an early look at my memoir. It is being edited now, so this is not a perfect script. Introduction Welcome to The Cancer Diet, an autobiography that unfolds in the middle of the action, much like life itself. This story doesn’t begin with tidy explanations or carefully planned structure;…
-
Civil War #7 – Chapter 23 – The Choice
Ash lay on the floor, vision swimming, blood matting his hair, when he felt it: another jolt of heat in his veins. The black fluid roared again, surging through him like fire, searing the pain from his limbs. He growled and shoved upward, teeth clenched. For one second, he felt limitless. Then it sputtered. The…
-
Civil War #7 – Chapter 22 – The Storm Breaks
The gauntlet was in ruins. Steam hissed from shattered pipes. Fire licked the edges of the arena, casting flickering light across metal wreckage. Broken pistons groaned and buckled, their movements spasmodic, no longer part of a controlled machine but instead the death throes of something massive and unthinking. Ash ran. Every breath tore through his…
-
Civil War #7 – Chapter 21 – The Shortcut
Ash stood still in the silence that followed his last breath in the pit. His chest rose and fell, steam curling from his mouth in the cold air. All around him, the crowd held their breath. Somewhere above, announcers were scrambling for new scripts. The show was changing, and not how they’d written it. He…
-
Civil War #7 – Chapter 20 – The Cost of Power
The pit was silent but for the slow mechanical whine of the drone hovering above. Ash and Mouse stood opposite one another, the circle of light narrowing around them like a spotlight pulled from some ancient play. Ash wiped blood from his nose and squared his stance. “You really believe in all this now?” Mouse…
-
Civil War #7 – Chapter 19 – Fire and Flesh
The crowd had gone quiet, their bloodlust momentarily stilled by Ash’s defiance. He stood at the edge of the platform, staring at the gauntlet, his jaw set, arms trembling. “I’m not playing your game,” he muttered. The Director stepped closer, his voice calm and almost paternal. “Of course you are, Ash. You’ve been playing it…
-
Civil War #7 – Chapter 18 – Ash’s Shame
The room was dim, washed in the pale flicker of a screen looping Ember’s performance. Over and over, Ash watched her sing—watched the object sail through the air and strike her in the chest, watched her crumple to the ground. The crowd laughed. The hosts chuckled, their voices slick with mockery. Ash sat frozen. His…
-
Civil War #7 – Chapter 16 & 17
Ember’s voice filled the room and disappeared. No echo. No feedback. No warmth. She’d been singing for hours, guided only by blinking lights—green for pitch, red for error. The chamber was circular, sterile, humming like the inside of a sealed vault. It reminded her of the kind of room you went into when something needed…
-
Civil War #7 – Chapter Fifteen – Ember in Bloom
The room smelled like citrus and glass. Ember sat in a soft reclining chair—far softer than anything she’d ever used in the commune. The fabric adjusted to her posture with each shift, and above her, an ambient light moved like a simulated sun, casting her in perfect tones. A styling robot moved around her in…
-
Civil War #7 – Chapter 12 to 14
Chapter 12 Ash couldn’t sleep. The dorm was too quiet, the kind of stillness that felt artificial—like the whole commune was holding its breath. The hum of the central systems, usually a comforting white noise, now sounded like the pulse of a watchful eye. He slid out of bed and slipped his boots on quietly.…
-
Civil War #7 – Chapters 10 and 11
Chapter Ten – Return to the Silence Ash rode back to the commune in silence. The transport hummed along a raised magline, flanked by sheer fencing and floodlights that turned the outside world into silhouettes and haze. A single enforcer sat at the front of the cabin, motionless behind a dark visor. Ash’s wrists were…
-
Civil War #7 – Chapter Nine – The Lie Between Us
Ash woke to a sharp, antiseptic brightness. The lights above him buzzed faintly, their sterile blue glow bouncing off metallic walls. Something cold clamped around his wrists and ankles. His mouth was dry. His body ached. He was on a table. And he was not alone. White-coated medical techs moved around him, masked and silent.…
-
Civil War #7 – Chapter Eight – The Director’s Stage
Ash lay on the arena floor, blood pooling beneath him, when the lights above flickered and dimmed again. A fresh roar rolled through the stands—an altogether different sound. Higher-pitched. Frenzied. Performative. The screens crackled, the floor lighting up beneath Ash’s broken frame. A bold, stylized logo spun into view: “LIVE FROM THE STAGE OF ORDER…
-
Civil War #7 Chapter Seven – Broadcast
Ash stood behind the gate to the arena, heart pounding, as the lights dimmed and the screen flared to life again. The crowd stirred with anticipation, their voices buzzing with speculation and mockery. “Coming up next in the Arena of Merit—a story of justice, order, and defiance. This is no ordinary match. This is a…
-
Civil War #7 – Chapter 5 & 6
Chapter Five – The Table The drone docked in eerie silence. Ash barely had time to get his footing before the hatch opened to reveal a corridor of polished chrome and matte black walls, humming faintly with power. He helped steady Mouse as two enforcers flanked them, gesturing wordlessly toward the end of the hall. …
-
Civil War #7 – Chapters 2 to 4
Chapter Two – Morning Lessons The next morning began like every other—buzzing lights flickered on with a soft chime, signaling the start of communal check-in. Ash stood in the back row of the common room, half-awake, arms crossed. The residents, pleebs and upwardly mobile alike, stood at attention beneath the ever-watching eye of the home’s…
-
`Civil War #7 – Chapter One: Ash and Ember`
Civil War #7 – Chapter One: Ash and Ember The artificial sun glared down on the commune, casting clean shadows over fields too orderly to be natural. The scent of synthetic wheat mingled with the low hum of the harvest drones drifting overhead. Ash wiped the sweat from his brow with a dirt-streaked hand and…
-
How to Try to Write a Novel
No, this isn’t a blog post on the ins and outs of writing a novel and publishing it. This is, however, a post on preparing yourself to attempt writing a novel and setting yourself up with a story you can actually write about until completing. I will post more on the process of writing and…
-
Bad News and Good News in the New Year.
Lets get the bad news over with first- Empire won’t be ready for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. The good news? I’m giving myself time to make it the quality it deserves to be! I continue to be amazed at the improvements made as I work on it. I don’t want to submit something that…
-
Empire is getting edited for entry to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2013 contest!
I know I haven’t posted here in a loooooonnnggg time. It’s pretty hard work trying to teach a new subject at a new school. Editing a novel on top of that was simply impossible for a while. This is my formal observation year, so teaching has to be priority number one. The good news? Things…
-
On teaching and my protagonist.
I love being a teacher. Being a middle school teacher is an especially wonderful thing. Let’s face it- middle school stinks. It’s an awkward time for everyone. Guiding children through middle school, however, is a wonderful thing.We all have disastrous memories of some part of our middle school experience. Maybe you experienced truly struggling to…
-
On Killing Characters.
There are many types of death for a character in a literary work, but by far the worst is where the cease to exist completely. I have had to provide that most depressing of deaths for a few characters over the last week. While they were all good people who I liked, they were either…
-
It’s quiet… Too quiet.
Yes, I know you haven’t seen a ton posted here lately. I just want to assure you that things are moving forward. School starts tomorrow, so I have had to wade back into my day job as a middle school teacher. I am getting ready to start editing Empire, I am just waiting for two…
-
Back from vacation with my first reader feedback!
—
by
I just returned from a week of fun and sun with my wife’s family. It was the best beach trip I have had with them, and was very restive as well. One thing I did not do, however, was work on the novel very much. I printed up a copy of it and took it…
-
On beginnings.
I did it! The first draft of Empire is done! I printed up the first four chapters first to start editing them, and I am already extremely happy with the improvements being made. Part of me regrets even sharing what parts I did now. The book will truly be ten times better by the time…
-
On endings.
I’m about to write the last few paragraphs of my first draft. It’s got me feeling very emotional, even though I’m turning around and re-tooling the whole first five chapters next week. Despite that work looming ahead of me, I will still have a book that is readable from start to finish, even if it…
-
On editing and fear.
Editing terrifies me. When I wrote in college, editing always took my work and twisted it into something it wasn’t at first. I began to think of editing as the process of bastardizing a work until it was ground beef, rather than the filet it was when it existed in my head. Putting words onto…
-
History and happiness: My writing story
I could have done it on Friday, but I decided to leave meeting my word count goal for today, and I just did it! I decided a few months into the school year this year to set forth writing my first novel. This is a dream I have had since I was a kid and…
-
While you wait.
It will be a while until I release any more from the novel. I have a lot of work to do to get the bits I did release up to snuff, and want to get it nice and sparkly before anyone sees more of it. In other words, I won’t release more of the book…
-
85% Done!
42640 / 50000 words. 85% done! The story is really cruising on now. I am getting closer to having a complete tale, and I find that vastly exciting. There are sections I am hugely proud of. I know that going back to edit will be a ton of work, but I am getting more…
-
Updated my story on Worthy of Publishing.
I added to more chapters to what I posted of Empire on Worthy of Publishing. These five chapters make up the first act. The more I have realized this, the more I have also realized that I need to beef this section up. I am very happy with the end. The middle is coming out…
-
Once the work is over, the work begins again.
I have to admit that as I get closer to finishing the first draft, I start to feel more uneasy with certain sections of it. I have always known the old adage that you need to show what is happening to your reader and not simply tell them the events. I know I have broken…
Frank M. Anderson's Writing 