might happen to prey on a human . In first grade , our teacher used to sing these songs with us and there was one really morbid song she sang about getting eaten by a boa constrictor . I couldn ' t deal with that . It ' s supposed to be a fun song about being eaten by a giant snake . There ' s nothing really offensive about it other than the one kid in class that ' s scared of it and , yeah , that was me .
If you had to be a character from any sci-fi or horror film , who would you be , and why ? The only thing that keeps popping in my head is a character from comic books and super hero movies . Various super heroes but I don ' t think I would want to be them . I would just want their powers . I don ' t think I would want to be anybody in horror movies . Unless you ' re Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees or whoever but they always get killed . That must be a miserable existence . They have to think about coming back to life and that ' s really stressful .
Have you experienced any challenges in your writing career ? How did you overcome them ? I think the biggest challenge was and still is changing it from a hobby into a career . I started from nowhere and wasn ' t an established writer at all . I did write for a website but that was a website ... well , basically , no one goes to these websites . I ' m still trying to turn my writing into a career . It may or may not ever happen , but I ' m enjoying the process nevertheless . Getting and keeping readers is one challenge . Creating , writing and posting eBooks is a very oversaturated market right now . It has the feel where anybody can do it , but not everybody should do it . More people put out stuff that sucks . Overcoming the stigma of the online writer is challenging . That stigma , for instance , is someone who thinks they have a good idea and then the next thing you know they ' re posting " Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles " erotica . I ' m personally not a fan of erotica but I might read it out of curiousity because that sounds hilarious ... As long as the ninja turtles are not doing it with each other because they ' re brothers and that would be wrong ... I guarantee if you Google TMNT erotica someone has written it and posted it in the internet .
What ’ s a typical day like for you – do you have any odd or interesting habits to get the creative muse ( s ) going ? Not particularly . I do enjoy on occasion a good meditation to clear my mind . I just went through a period of a month where work became way too much . When I came back from vacation and work it was hard to get focused again to put together " Dusk ." I have some meditation tracks on my iPod that are about 1 / 2 hour each . I listen to them and I can usually focus better . Normally I do like to write every day even if it ' s a just a few paragraphs . If you don ' t write something for a month , your work is going to suffer . For my lunch at work and my afternoon break I always write . I have this trick where I eat my lunch at work and then at lunch at noon I can sit and write . I ' ll go and type for the whole half hour . At night , if it ' s not too hectic and I ' m not exhausted after being with my kids and walking the dog , I ' ll try and do a little more . As far as muses and inspiration , I take it where I can get it . There ' s a lot of stuff in my stories based on personal experience . In ' Dusk ," the girl on Humphrey Street is actually a real person . That was a real experience I ' ve had . I just twisted it into a dark story . Some stories are based on conversations with friends . A story on my site called Dinner with a Demon is partly derived from a story my friend told me . He told me the story that inspired a really morbid tale . A lot of my short stories , especially , are like that . Ideas from conversations or from letting my mind wander help the creative muses fly .
Reflecting back on your experience , what advice would you give an aspiring writer ? I actually wrote a piece on my blog about this . It ' s called Budgie ' s writing tips . It ' s a pretty long version of what you should and shouldn ' t do as an online writer . The best advice I could give is to not do it unless you know your writing is good . You gotta have a thick skin and you gotta make sure you ' re ready for the criticism . There are people out there who will tell you you ' re shit because they think it ' s funny . Make sure you get someone you trust to beta read and beta edit and that what you ' re putting out there is edited before you post it . Make sure you ' re ready to deal with anything negative people will say about it . I wrote the post last year sometime and people will ask me for my advice so I threw all the questions into that one post . ( Read Budgie ' s writing tips here ).
Do you have any exciting news to share ( other than the release of " Dusk Vol . 1 !")? I ' m always putting stuff out there . I am working on some stuff for next year . I ' ve got enough stuff written for my site . " Freedom Lane Season 9 " is coming up which is probably the best season I ' ve put out . I ' ve got a book coming out next year called " Envy ." I want to have it out in the first part of the year . Also , next year a quarter of