Life

From Me to You in this Universe, While We Are Still Alive.

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Maybe you’ve suffered great tragedy.

Maybe your life has been blessed beyond measure.

Maybe you’ve lost all motor functions.

Maybe all your dreams have come true.

Maybe you died years ago.

Maybe all of these things are true, in different universes, different timelines, in the great multitude of possibilities everything has happened. Or maybe time goes on forever and matter is finite, so you have existed endless millions of times before, and you will again.

But regardless, you are here. And in being able to consider these vast theoretical possibilities, we can consider what our lives are now. Maybe there is no other life, no other universes. Maybe this is all we have.

If so, it’s even more beautiful. As fucked up or as blessed as your life may be, it is your life. It’s yours. Take a moment to embrace that.

More than likely, your life, as my life, has had both tragedy and moments of joy. I am grateful for all of it. All the pain and the love. All of it.

I know now, at 31 years old, that who I am and the love in my heart is a gift. Even though I can be jaded sometimes, I don’t let it stop me. I do my best to share it with the world, in my writing, with my students, with my loved ones, and strangers I interact with every day. And I’m proud of that. More proud of that than anything else.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

-Evan Pickering

VERY GOOD NEWS!! And a Moment of my Gratitude.

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First off, to those readers who took a second to write a review for my new American Rebirth Trilogy Box Set, thank you from the bottom of my heart. It is because of you, that this awesome news has happened:

I GOT A NEW BOOKBUB DEAL!!!!

I submitted the very Box Set Trilogy in question for a bookbub featured deal, figured it was worth a shot. I got my first bookbub deal last year for HOOD and it was incredible. I sold thousands of books in a day.

That’s how badass a Bookbub deal is.

AND I GOT ANOTHER ONE!

Thanks to those people who wrote the reviews. If I didn’t have reviews, I don’t get no deal. So thank you kindly.

The featured deal for the boxset will be on Nov. 29th-Dec 2nd. It’ll be on sale during that time.

It’s pretty baller. I’m psyched to get the box set rolling, it’s something I’m really proud of. Looking at all three books together just kinda made something click and I felt pretty happy while I was formatting it for release.

I’m trying not to flip out, but it’s pretty freaking awesome.

See you soon, wastelanders.

-Ev

Summertime Life/Book Update…

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There’ ain’t nothin’ like Summer, is there?

So I figure I’d give you a guys a little life-update. A window into the world of Evan for just a moment.

  1. I’m diligently working on my new Post-Apoc novel. I’ve posted excerpts from it already, it’s the origins of the American Rebirth series. It’s Rob and Taylor from when the shit hits the fan so to speak. God damn it is so much fun to write.
  2. I’m reading Wool by Hugh Howey. I don’t know how many of you have gotten into this one. I’m very curious to see what happens… but I gotta admit it hasn’t lived up to the hype for me. I’d love to have some questions answered, and I’d love to know more about the world and the state of humanity other than the Silos, but as far as the characters go… I just have very little investment. He keeps changing who the main character is, and it’s frustrating. The original protagonist, Holston, I liked a lot and was totally on board with his desire to leave the silo and try to find his wife. But that storyline, well, it just stops. It’s well written, but I just don’t know if it’s my style.
  3. I got a new day job teaching 11th and 12th grade English at a local high school! I’m pretty excited about it. Teaching is another big passion of mine. It fills a different part of my life then writing does, and often it gets me excited to write. So there’ s a pretty good synergy there.
  4. I’m going up to New Hampshire with some family for some summertime lake vacation. I love it up there. I’m going to hopefully get a lot of writing done and just recharge myself. There’s nothing like raw nature and the smell of mountain air.
  5. I’m going to Thrillerfest tomorrow (friday) in NYC! If anyone is going, stop by and say hi!

I hope y’all are having a good Summer. As per usual if any of you have any questions or want to chat, leave a comment, hit me up on twitter, or Email me at Evanpickering@Evanpickeringauthor.com

Stay safe, wastelanders.

Evan

11,315 Days.

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Thirty-one.

It’s hard to believe sometimes. Happy birthday to me, 11,315 days of life. And there’s no guarantee i’ll get any more than that.

I’m grateful for all of them. For all the things that have gone wrong, my life has been pretty incredible. I’ve got a lot to be thankful for.

I think I’ll list them here.

  • The people I love. Family, friends, the great loves of my life.
  • My books. My love of storytelling, of imagination, of history.
  • My health. I feel young, stronger than I ever have before, and largely unhindered.
  • My curiosity. I’ve been gifted with a love of learning, of enjoying new things, of reveling in growth. It’s made my life a lot of fun and painless in many ways.
  • My pride. I feel proud of who I am, of the light in bring into other people’s lives just by being who I am (I know that sounds arrogant as fuck) and the pride I take in the choices I’ve made and the things I have done. Even the mistakes. Even the big ones.
  • The world. Because it’s gorgeous, endlessly interesting, tragic and beautiful all at the same time. Getting a chance to live life is so incredible.

I was thinking today about just having the chance to live, and how improbable that is. How many people, how many bloodlines died out just to the path of history? How many near misses were there where your ancestors might have died before they could conceive the next generation have their been?

Just our very existence here is a marvel of probability, an incredible gift, a confluence of chance and love.

I don’t plan on wasting it.

Have a good one, everyone. I know I will. Happy birthday to me.

-Evan P.

 

 

Entertaining (and Short) Heather Graham Interview!

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Good friend of mine and author-superstar Heather Graham just did a HuffPost interview about herself as a writer and her new book. It’s quite entertaining. She’s also a ridiculously talented and successful author for y’all who don’t know her!

Heather Graham Huffington Post Interview.

 

Some quick hitters:

  • She’s published over 150 (WHAT?) books.
  • She wrote her first novel on a typewriter that didn’t have an “E” key. I would’ve thrown up.
  • Her choice of 5 people alive or dead for a dinner party is…unconventional lol.

Alright, have a good weekend everyone!

-Evan Pickering

 

My Words at 30.

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God I still love this song. Such a classic.

I first listened to this song when I was somewhere around the age of 18. Twelve years later it’s still great.

I thought I’d be scared or freaked out by thirty.

But I’m pretty happy about it. I’ve got a lot of reasons to love where I’m at in my life. Looking back at all the things that I’ve done (get it?) brings me more joy than anything else.

There are many various ways to measure how my life has gone, but…

I have so much love in my life. And I have given so much love and happiness to others over the course of my thirty years. Of all the things that I’ve done, that’s really all that matters.

As a thirty year old man, I feel in many ways like a better, stronger, wiser version of my younger self. I’ve grown up in the ways that are valuable, and I’ve stayed young in the ways that matter.

I can’t ask for much more than that.

I think one of the strongest truths that I know now at my age is this:

Words mean everything. 

The words you tell yourself in your head will define you. Positive or negative you will make them real.

The words you say to others about yourself–sooner or later you will accept them as truth even if you didn’t in the beginning.

The things you say to other people and the things they say to you is the fabric all of humanity is built on. Say good things, meaningful things, useful things, funny things–be careful with the hammer that is your anger and frustration. Saying harsh or critical things is necessary in life. But do not make it something that gives you power or satisfaction.

Many people live in fear of saying positive, kind or flattering things to others. They only do so sparingly as if it somehow is a risk that makes us lesser, weaker or vulnerable. It does not. Do not believe the lie that kindness is weakness. Kindness is true strength.

Thank you to everyone that has made my 30th birthday something special. I love you guys. And to those that have never met me or do not know me, I love you too. I hope all’s well.

-Evan

 

The Search for More…

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There’s something inherently human about wanting more, about always looking towards the next goal.

It might just be wired into how we think. It’s the reason why billionaires still want more money, and why many famous people still feel unsatisfied enough to have breakdowns despite what others might see as “achieving success.”

So last week I just got my first Bookbub for HOOD on May 11th. For those of you who don’t know, Bookbub is like the Starship Enterprise of book promotions–and the next closest promotion might be a Hyundai Sonata in comparison.

In short, it’s a very big deal for authors, they’re very hard to get, and it’s been one of the top goals of mine since I launched the book.

When I booked it, I was doing all kinds of shouting and fistpumping and bouncing off the walls of my apartment.

And yet, something funny happens. And it happens to us all.

Mere days later I was looking ahead to what the next steps were. I got the Bookbub I so lustily desired, and now I was booking other promos. I was thinking ahead to when I can have Book 3 done, and maybe having some new covers made, etc.

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The point is, we always chase the next thing ahead of us. Even in the face of great success. Make no mistake, booking this Promo was a huge coup for me. And yet so quickly I push on to the next goal. In many ways, this is a positive thing. Stay Hungry, as they say, and drive yourself to do more and find your own greatness.

But there is a problem with this. We need to enjoy, celebrate and revel in our successes. Our wins in life must feel like wins. Because our losses certainly can feel cruel and horrible, sometimes cripplingly so, can’t they?

If we do not take time to appreciate what we have done, what we have overcome, and bask in the sunlight in the positive things we’ve created in our own lives, whatever they may be, then we are driving our one and only car ragged down the empty road of the wastelands until it breaks down.

It is good and noble to strive for more, to better ourselves, to be in search of our better selves.

But we must not strive aimlessly like an addict in the dark. When we find pieces of our better selves, we must stop to appreciate them.

Maybe–I don’t know–but maybe there’s a point where we need not strive anymore at all?

-Evan Pickering

 

 

Longview

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Ah, what a classic jam. Sounds like childhood.

If you could picture yourself on the timeline of your life, and you could climb up a great tower and take a longview in all directions, what might you see?

  • Backwards, we can see the path we’ve taken here. Messy, bending, rife with good times and bad. Hopefully more bad than good. This way lies madness. A short look back might bring a smile and some warm thoughts. But the longer you look the more obsessed you become with the choices you made.

 

  • To the left and right, we see what could have been. The places and people we might have gone and met, some catastrophic, some fantastic, some wildly different then what we know now, but probably many that are just different incarnations of our own life. This is a matter of curiosity, of warnings and possibilities, but still it only serves us to consider our choices now.

 

  • Ahead, we strain to see forward, but the fog, the great fog clouds what we can see. We think we see shapes and possibilities, we make guesses as to what is and plan what paths we might take through the fog, but we cannot see clearly no matter how much we try. Still, this is the direction we must face moving forward, pushing blindly into the fog and trusting our reactions and instincts to find one of many right ways on.

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I’ve lived most of my life thinking little of the future, enjoying the present and trusting in myself. I’m blessed to be able to do this, and it is by in large a good thing. But there is a caveat. It is vital, I believe, to be proactive in the present, and to imagine the kind of future-present we hope to have. And to be unrelenting in our pursuit of whatever it is. Our imagination is a weapon used for or against ourselves, and we must use it to envision the truly good and valuable things we want and purse them.

It’s easy to imagine all the things that can go wrong, all the reasons not to do something. But through our imagination of what can be is where we can achieve all great things.

Our lives are some small percent the perception of the present moment around us, and a huge percent all the things we imagine about ourselves; the stories we tell ourselves about our past and our future and what could have been.

Your thoughts can be a weapon used for or against you. Don’t let them cut you so deep you can’t push on. Longviews can be necessary, but don’t linger there too long. There’s plenty more to be enjoyed and done right now.

 

-Evan

 

Passion.

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What makes a book great?

What makes anything great, really?

There’s a lot of different reasons, with varying degrees of validity. Books, for example, are good when the writing skill comes through in the prose, the storycrafting elements are well executed, and the content of the story is tantalizing, thought provoking, draws you in and makes you actively wonder what will happen next.

But ultimately, what really makes a book, or anything, great, is the passion you can feel in it.

 

Passion is visible, feel-able, through solid wall and open sky from miles away. And I don’t mean specifically romantic passion. Sure, it can be that too, but in this case I mean the internal passion that is not self-serving. It’s not about wanting. It’s about that which means so much that you feel compelled to share it because you don’t know what else to do.

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You can tell the difference between a well-written book and a well-written book that comes from a fire inside the writer. A book that the writer felt in his or her blood, one that screamed in his or her mind to come out, one that grips the heart of the reader in its fist–That book leaves the reader shaken in the best way, thinking about their life and what they love. And hopefully, it ignites passion in those readers.

Passion can be a limited resource. A precious gem, something that can be poured out and take shape, or can wane and be lost, formless and ethereal. It can be given, inspired, which is an act of love and beauty.

Passion is one of the greatest things in life. It’s dangerous, it can be scary, it can consume us in its immolating fire and trigger fear of loss or failure. But still, it is worth it. Passion can take so many forms, and should never be taken for granted, should be hunted and treasured and fought for.

Sometimes I’m writing a story, and I know it’s good, but something feels missing. And I have to step back, and take some time. What was it that burned inside me so much that I took the years to write this series? What was that which boiled my blood and kept me up at night, that surged adrenaline through me just at the thought of the reader taking in the words? That is what I want. That’s what I must continue to write.

That’s the way I want to keep trying to live.

Evan