Jeff Pollet

I had a few goals with my first book, and they weren't particularly lofty goals--I wanted to write something that I would enjoy reading, I wanted to get the book all the way to "published", and I wanted to sell more than 100 copies. This set of goals determined some of the choices I made, of course. To get it across the finish line, I decided to use Amazon, for instance, despite some issues I have with the company. I kept the book short and sweet, not particularly complex, so I would actually finish the damn thing. And, I decided to not hire a professional editor. A few good friends helped me edit the book, and they gave me great feedback, caught a lot of errors (some simple and some not-so-simple). It was also fun to interact with those people, people I know and trust and enjoy getting constructive criticism from. There was some awkwardness regarding some of the folks I know who I didn't ask to do a read of the book, but (gratefully) most of those folks didn't...

Began editing Miskatonic Bay (Lake Miskatonic, Book Two) today, after a few weeks of not looking at it at all (on purpose!). I'm going by feel as far as how much I want to/ought to work on it, trying to find the best way to continue to move forward. Lake Miskatonic is the first book I've ever finished writing, but by far not the first book I ever started writing, so the habits I got into when writing it seem important to continue. One of those habits is to take a break when I feel like it, but it's really hard to do that, because of the fear of never-coming-back-to-finish, which had been my mode of operation for all of the books I never finished! But I took a break anyway. I gave myself a few weeks. Maybe three. And a date to begin again. And when I didn't feel like beginning again on that date, I didn't. Not even sure if that's the right choice, honestly. Many writers will tell you you're either in it or you're not Stephen King in his book On...

I had this idea: "I'll write a Lovecraftian book about Oakland." That's where I started from. I know sometimes ideas for books come from other sorts of places, but this was my desire, and having been riding my bike past the lake in Oakland for years, the lake was where the idea grew. And I wrote. Most days I wrote a chapter. Some days I wrote a bit more, some days I didn't write, but I kept plodding along, and I tried something different than all of the other times that I've tried to write a story: I didn't edit much as I went along. I kept moving forward, promising myself I'd do lots of good editing when I was finished. And I did do lots of editing. And I had wonderful people read the first (well, second) draft and give me feedback. And I edited more. And again. Doing things this way saved my book from the dead pile of ideas that I had edited-too-early to death over the rest of my life. I carried this method forward even further--though many ...

Moving to Oakland may have literally saved my life. I had lived in SF for ten years or so, and it was killing me, even though I didn't realize it until I came to Oakland. I moved partly because of a girlfriend, partly because of an opportunity to live in a neat place, partly to get away from horrible landlords. I loved Oakland immediately, even if I didn't really know most of Oakland, only my little piece of it. People said 'hello' as I walked around my new neighborhood. There was a lake within walking distance. There wasn't as much of a sense of just-surviving that there had been in SF: People strolled sometimes, hung out on the grass around the lake. I felt more like myself in Oakland. I frame it as saving my life because I didn't realize how much the stress of SF had seeped into my body until I left SF. The relief was tangible, a relaxing of my body, my heart. I rode my bike more. I socialized a little more. I finally figured out that I had been dealing ...

Order now! "The birds have come back to the lake, and the bodies..." Order Lake Miskatonic here. Walter Denin has lived in Oakland his entire life, and has been a private investigator for decades. When a dead body shows up in the lake under mysterious circumstances, he's asked to look into it. And when the mysterious circumstances turn out to involve a cult, white supremacists, and what looks like ancient magics, Walter finds himself in a new world where monsters exist and the Klu Klux Klan is making a comeback. For Oakland to survive, he'll have to revisit his past, open his mind, and maybe even sacrifice his life. Lucky for him he's not alone: His associate Darya knows Oakland almost as well as he does, his ex Susan can help connect him to both the Ohlone people and the New Black Panthers, and even the cormorants on the lake seem to be on his side. They'll all face an ancient evil that has its eyes on Oakland.