 What's shaking? My name's Cam. Welcome back to another video. I spent more time than I'm willing to admit thinking about how I could make this video without it seeming like a shameless self-promotion. Then I remembered that at some point I'm going to have to suck it up and actually do some marketing for myself anyway. In this video I'm going to be talking about some of the struggles and the difficulties and the issues that I had while I was writing my new book that's coming out soon and some of this video is inherently going to seem like I'm trying to push my book. I'm sorry, it is what it is. With that in mind, let me get this out of the way first. I wrote a book. It's called Welcome to Cent and it comes out on January 25th. It should also be available for pre-order in just a couple of weeks so keep an eye out for that as well. So it's a psychological horror and that fact actually does play a really big part in a lot of the issues that I had writing it. So that you understand just what I mean, I am going to have to explain the plot for you. On that note, actually, can I just say, first of all, one of the things that is a difficulty for me, one of the things I suck at most is the elevator pitch. So the idea of an elevator pitch is basically imagine that you get into an elevator and there is another person in that elevator. Somehow you find out that that person happens to be a big book publisher or a big literary agent. You realize that this is your chance to pitch your book to them but you only have about a minute or so until the elevator gets to their floor. So you have to make it quick and you have to make it interesting. I suck at the elevator pitch. I've just never been that good at talking about my own stuff and like hyping it up without feeling like I'm being pretentious. But I am well aware as well that that is my own insecurity that I need to work through. That's something I need to get over and I'm trying. Welcome to Cent is about a cynical man in his forties named Joseph Ridley. His life is at rock bottom and he is bitter as hell about it. He's lost everything, his wife, his cars, his expensive suits, everything he was once proud of, it's all gone. One day a mysterious storm rolls into his city and all of a sudden he finds that his home and his neighbors have been transformed. They have been transformed into a labyrinth of horrors and forgotten and buried memories. As Joe descends deeper into the belly of madness, you'll find out that things he's done in his past that led him to where he is now. You'll find out all of the terrible things that have happened to him, all of the terrible things that he has done. You may even find yourself wondering if Joseph deserves to be saved. I like to think of Welcome to Cent as 1408 meets Silent Hill. They and a few other stories were actually a huge inspiration for me going into this, mainly because I felt that this story needed to be more than just bloodthirsty maniacs. Don't get me wrong. They're in there, but I put a lot of effort as well into making sure that the real horror here is the atmosphere. The storm that sweeps through the city is almost a character in itself. It has this malicious sentience. My favorite thing in horror, like all of my favorite movies, always have this one thing in common and it's when the location or the environment is just as much a part of the horror of the terror. So that was a huge driving force for me in writing Welcome to Cent. Anyway, now that you know what the book is about, it should actually make a lot more sense when I tell you that sinking myself into Joseph's journey was so emotionally taxing. I've never experienced anything like it before in my life. I never thought that would be a thing. I always thought because it's fiction, I'm always going to feel detached from the story, at least enough for it not to have like a big emotional impact on me. But in the very least, in the case of this book, that's just not true. There are some really, really dark themes I had to go into with this one. They weren't all planned when I did the outline, and I can promise you that they weren't done just for like shock or to make the reader feel uncomfortable for their sake of being uncomfortable. Some of the stuff in this story that is going to be pretty hard to read, I just feel like it needed to be there. I felt like it was the story's natural progression. To be fair, some of the parts of the original outline were actually darker as well and I actually had to tone them down because it felt like at certain points it was just being a bit gratuitous. Regardless, some of the things I wrote here were a first for me and they were pretty disturbing. Some were even a bit personal. One of the final chapters that I wrote actually almost choked me up, not because my writing was just so good, so beautifully written, but just because it was a big emotional breaking point for this character that I'd been working on and working with for like over a year. I wanted to be really respectful when writing about this stuff are these dark themes because some of them are rooted in some very real life stuff, but at the same time, I wanted to be really blunt about just how horrifying situations like that can be. I didn't want to shy away from it. My entire point is that I hadn't really written about things as dark or grim as I had with this book before, so that was really hard for me. It was difficult. I literally almost quit about halfway through because I just wasn't sure that I could do it. I wasn't sure I could do it well enough, but I'm really glad I stuck it out. I really am. If I can be so bold, I'm proud of myself. When it comes to psychological horror, death is rarely the worst thing that could happen. So you have to go to some really disturbing places. Another really, really tricky thing with writing psychological horror is balancing the action and, you know, like the emotional or mental horrors. I imagine that either way, no matter how I did it really, there were going to be people that either said that there was too much violence, too much gore, or there would be people that would say, ah, there's too much introspection. It's too slow. I don't think there's any avoiding that, if I'm being honest. I think I got the balance right, based off of the help from my really awesome beta readers, mostly. But I guess we'll see. I always wanted it to be a mix of both action and psychological. So I knew it would be a challenge. I knew what I was getting myself into. On a more general note, and I've mentioned this before, but I'm an underwriter through and through. When I finished my first draft, I think there was maybe around 60,000 words total, something like that. And now that it's polished and done, it's actually closer to about 75,000 words, which is a lot closer to what I wanted. Most people I talk to in the writing community, they say that they write this massive first draft and then they need to cut off everything and it kills them when they cut off stuff. I'm the complete opposite. I obviously have to go back and cut some things out, but I also have to replace it and then add a lot more meat onto it as well. A big issue I have, and I'm not even sure if you can consider it an issue, to be honest, when it comes to being a first draft. But I will go from action scene to action scene, event to event in the story, just like... Faster than Sonic the Hedgehog on a caffeine high. I've never been that great at the slower, more emotionally charged parts, which is not what you want when you're writing a psychological horror. Writing this book has taught me a lot about writing personality arcs for characters, which is cool. What I mean is like, you can't have a D-bag character become a sweetheart, just like that. You have to coax them there slowly. You have to leave breadcrumbs and clues and hints that they're starting to change, that they're starting to crack. It's really hard, but it's a cool thing to like practice. It's a cool thing to get better at. A bit of a weird note, but something else I had a lot of trouble with was actually writing one particular character. It was a character in the beginning of the story who has a brief, but important role. I can't really say too much without spoiling, but it's a character that Joseph meets and this character is meant to be very intimidating and to be honest, like a confusing individual. I wanted this character to speak in really like cryptic sentences, almost in riddles, but I realized very difficult that it's hard to do that without sounding like a complete jackass. Making philosophical quips seem truly chilling rather than just like bad creepypasta dialogue is hard, man. Writing the end of the book took a really long time. That was probably one of the longest parts for me to finish, but it was also one of the funnest. Here's a fun fact. I actually have a bit of a secret alternate ending to the book as well. I truly had no idea through the entire story if Joseph would survive or not. I knew pretty much how the story needed the end, but that one fact was something I never really was decided on. I just wasn't sure what seemed right. Did he deserve to live? Would him dying be an appropriate resolution to this like character journey that I'd created? Does a horror even need the have a happy ending? Can it have a happy ending? I'm glad I went with the ending that I did. I think it really is the best version, but the other version is pretty wild as well. Maybe I can release the alternate version as like an anniversary copy, like a year down the line or something. So I know that the struggles and difficulties I've mentioned in this video are pretty specific to my story or at least writing a psychological horror. They aren't really like general writer struggles but I still thought it would be fun to give you a bit of a behind the scenes on welcome descent before it comes out next year. Hey, what are you struggling with most in your work in progress? Thanks for watching, especially this far. I really, really appreciate it. I know hearing someone just talk about their story can be a bit boring at times. I hope it was still entertaining. I hope it was still interesting and I hope it gives you a bit of insight into what it's like to, I don't know, finish and hopefully polish a story. Thanks again. I really do hope you have a nice day. Catch ya.