Sawyer’s Rules for Writing

I’ve been away from this blog, finding something productive I might do. My Pazuzu Trilogy hasn’t made it to bookstores or evolved into movies and it’s been four years and twelve revisions since I self-published the epic. I’ve stopped promoting the books, and apparently my other books, too. I scold myself and live with the consequences of my cessation to hollering into deaf winds. As expected, nothing in my life has changed besides being even more poor. I’ve got an ex-fiance who would say that’s evidence of lacking manhood – eff her, she hasn’t helped me in any respect. I have a vision I hope captures the imaginations of millions before I die.

Regardless the languid state of my past stories – Debbie’s Hellmouth being the last I self-published back in December 2012 – I’ve stayed busy. I’m writing a new story. It’s working title is The Abhorred. And it’s a modern retelling of the movie Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. Readers will love it – at least that’s the mark I shoot for.

I’m also concentrating on style. I’ve got one. A blog post I made back in September 2012 presented its guiding principles. The post is titled “You’re Writing Wrong.” The Abhorred adheres to rules generated by this so-called manifesto. Because of this imposed stricture, the book shines and it’s almost done. My Rules for Writing helps the story stand-out, positively glow as an adventure about monsters.

Below is a broad showcase of my writing rules. This overview will help other writers follow my ink trail, if they would be so brave and choose. Writers such as Kurt Vonnegut and James Joyce (AKA Cormac McCarthy) influenced these practical crib notes. For your scrutiny…

Chapters -
Short chapters – ten-twelve pages.
Each chapter is a touchstone for the rest of the story.
Each chapter minimally imparts one story or character point.

Sentences -
Strict Active Voice – avoid the past tense -ed. (said and asked are past tense)
Short Simple sentences.
Three to four sentences for each paragraph.

Words -
Action words deliver speeches.
Use Alliteration and Onomatopoeia – think Edgar Allan Poe.
Don’t be ashamed of adjectives and adverbs.

Spelling -
American English
Strictly correct
Don’t mislead readers for the sake of confusing characters.

Punctuation -
A period always follows the word “said.”
A period always follows the word “asked.”
Abundant commas (pauses for readers).

Special Punctuation Points -
Avoid exclamation marks.
Colons are used for lists – use sparingly if unavoidable.
Semicolons connect two complimentary sentences or incomplete sentences – use sparingly if unavoidable.

Capitalization -
The words mom, mother, dad, father are Proper Nouns when related characters are addressed.
First letter following a quotation mark is capitalized.
Seasons capitalized for effect.

Quotation -
Spoken words bracketed by double quotation marks.
Thoughts bracketed by single quotes.
Informal speech patterns are made acceptable.

There you are, the technical skeleton for my body of work. Check out my ebooks on Smashwords. Paperbacks are available from my store front on LULU. I’d appreciate the support of you readers. If we ever meet, I promise I’ll sign every physical copy you purchase.

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An Armored Awarwan

Awarwan, an alien god from younger aeons. He breathes life in Matthew Sawyer’s Pazuzu Trilogy.

Prints of his ghastly image are available from Deviantarts.

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Purchase Pazuzu Trilogy Pocket books and Hardcovers at LULU.

Matthew Sawyer’s Pazuzu Trilogy – The Wasted Revision

My Pazuzu Trilogy is a millennially unique, blasphemous, scrubbed-til-Sunday epic. The Eighth Revision was the first pass in which I did not make major changes – I found typos and a few obtuse sentences, but other than those, the changes are smattering instances of migrating blocks of text into dialogue. The following four revisions were then experiments with character names and locations. So yeah, the current and last revision is the Twelfth. It’s called the Wasted Revision. This last rewrite is dedicated to my pseudonym, Mr. Binger, the author of the two-volume hardcover edition of the Eleventh revision re-entitled The Waste.

* Mr. Binger has also recently self-published his weird and visceral horror stories Unction and Our Lord Weathercock. Pocketbooks available at LULU.

I hope readers enjoy the free ebook version of Manifestation – the first installment of the trilogy. And I’d like them to tell everyone they know and buy the second and third book. Manifestation is mostly background. It’s where I introduce the consequences of a godless world. Emergence is when the narrative grows teeth and nails. Here is where Pazuzu is revealed and my alien gods find this feckless demon.

Pazuzu (pahzoo’zoo) – king of demons in Assyrian mythology.

Manifestation (manufe’steyshun) – indication of the presence of a person or thing.

PAZUZU – MANIFESTATION is the first book in the Pazuzu Trilogy. This book introduces the godless world of the Shur desert and the sorrowful sinners therein. Readers follow a pair of UnChosen wretches as they flee for their lives from a crime lord in the city of Gomorrah. A stranger joins the Cortras brothers, but he doesn’t tell them about the voice following him. The wanderer doesn’t know the voice is Pazuzu. In fact, the demon reminds him his name is Ben. This man suffering amnesia carries salvation and damnation from the desert.

Download a free ebook version of Pazuzu – Manifestation (The Wasted Revision), the first book in the Pazuzu Trilogy by Matthew Sawyer. Get it from Smashwords!

Emergence (i’merjuns) – gradual coming out as a result of something.

PAZUZU – EMERGENCE is the second book in Matthew Sawyer’s Pazuzu Trilogy. This book continues the bleak tale begun in Pazuzu – Manifestation.

Horror comes to the battered squatters at Saint Erasmus once the demon, Pazuzu, finds a host. Lost in the chaos, Hen Cortras is taken prisoner and followed into the Shur desert, where he meets heathens – nomadic terrorists who crusade against the Chosen’s Church and military.

Ebook Sample from Smashwords

Abeyance (u’beyuns) – suspension.

PAZUZU – ABEYANCE is the last book in Matthew Sawyer’s Pazuzu Trilogy. The last book follows the demon, Pazuzu, in the shadow of the Promised Land’s destruction.

Achieving its goal, Pazuzu has claimed a human body. The demon steals the frame of a boy and makes the mother a missionary. Before the old mother dies, she proclaims her demon-possessed son is the messiah – the reincarnation of the Chosen’s eviscerated Mortal God. Meanwhile, the younger Cortras brother is arrested and beaten by the Chosen’s military and sent to a detention camp outside Capital.

At the camp, Hen Cortras meets real-life heathens. The prisoners escape the Chosen’s military and Hen joins their march against the Chosen’s Promised Land. The heathen attack has already begun behind the monumental Wall and Khetam burns. Pazuzu and Benedict Gage, his heathen minister, now cross the fires of Capital in search of the flock gathered by the mother of the possessed boy. The alien gods are now aware of the demon moving through the world and they send monsters.

Ebook Sample from Smashwords

Matthew Sawyer’s Bio: A few words concerning myself.

About me … I don’t have any awards – not even an honorable mention. Heck, I didn’t even go to school to become a Writer – I was going to be a Fine Art Painter. Yet I had to pay my student loans. After college, I worked in Mental Health – as in schizophrenics and other assortment of severe mental disorders. All the while, I painted and sketched – and wrote stories. In that time, I speculated the story I really wanted to conjure – years of drawing monsters had spun my own mythology and I hoped for something comparable and real.

The narrative I wanted to create would fulfill a fading desire and breathe life into the chimeras I had drawn in my notebooks. That visual mythology had been collectively called “The Mortui Philosophies.” I tried animation, but the repetitive work only produced frustration. So much in fact, I joined the ‘sane’ world and switched careers into Internet Technology. Secure, I had stopped painting and focused on a very rewarding career. After a few years lacking expression from my creative self, my Pazuzu Trilogy took its first breath.

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Purchase Pazuzu Trilogy Pocket books and Hardcovers at LULU.

Mr. Binger’s Unction

Unction is an icky story of a mad necrophiliac and his homeless nemesis who sleeps in a park across the street. Brian Tucker is that dysfunctional killer. Faceless nuns tell the young man he must kill and rape the corpses so that they will resurrect and become an army on undead. Brian is certain his hallucinations are true – there are demons. Monsters do hunt the residents of Los Angeles. And his zombies are the salvation of all mankind. Jake Whitehead refutes the mad delusions, even after they’re proven true. Mr. Whitehead is appointed the derelict consular of humanity by Brian’s demonic rival. Despite his limited capacities, the old homeless man embraces an angry crusade – a campaign that takes him and his sickened opposition from one corner of the San Fernando Valley to Santa Monica, California and back again. Their infernal battle begins at a community-based group home called Luna Del Mar. Here is where the LAPD immediately become involved. A Sergeant Jim Suffolk oversees the carnage as well as pursues finding a futile love.

Ebooks available from Smashwords.

Printed Pocketbook available at LuLu.

 

Reincarnation

The second revision of the Matthew Sawyer’s Wisconsin horror story entitled Debbie’s Hellmouth will be available on Amazon come Thanksgiving 2012!