Highway to the Comfort Zone

Happy Blog Day Everyone!

Today, I want to share a few words on comfort zones. Won’t be a long one as I’m currently fending off a very nasty cold, brought on by the constant change of weather here. Don’t worry, got a bigger blog planned for next week to make up for today’s shortness. Let’s move on to the weekly briefs!

Weekly Briefs

Harvey Duckman Presents…Volume 3

You didn’t think that just because Volume 2 was out and getting stellar reviews that this would be the end of it did you? Volume 3 is set for an October release, in what is proving to be a very packed month for my publisher. I submitted the Brennan and Riz story for this volume this past weekend, after having promised it for a while!

I had to pull my finger out to get it down, but I’m happy with it after the many, many revisions I made, but of course, like always, I’ll talk about that in detail after the book releases.

Don’t forget, if you write Steampunk, Fantasy, Sci Fi or Horror (or a mix of the genres), then feel free to submit your work to this growing anthology! Click here for submission guidelines.

Crossing the Tees 2019

You’re probably tired of me going on about this, but I just want to bring as much attention to it as humanly possible, after all I owe everything to this competition.
There’s only a couple of weeks left now till the competition deadline of Midnight 31st July, if you’re entering and haven’t handed in your entry yet, then don’t delay! I’ve started my entry, but it will be going out of my comfort zone again…Which oddly enough, is the theme for today’s blog! Funny that…

Creator Chaos

The next in our, All About Me, series is lined up, and it’s everyone’s favorite #vss365 tweeter, Kelvin Rodriguez! He will be at the mercy of whatever questions you want to ask, so please throw some good ones our way…

On Sunday, we recorded the latest episode, with Kelvin as the host. Everything went well and now Zack has gathered all our audio up to begin the fun task of editing. I’m not one hundred percent sure when this episode will get released, so keep an eye out for it. By the way, I sing Sinatra on this one…Yes, it’s as bad as you’re thinking.

A reminder of who the rest of Creator Chaos are:

Me – I don’t think I need to explain myself…
Kelvin Rodriguez – Fans and followers of the #vss365 tag will recognize this fellow and his creations, a master of the pun. He also has a mighty fine singing voice.

Zack Brooks – Author of the ‘Charlie the Cupid’ shorts and ‘The Trials of Amaford” novellas, the audio book version of ‘How Not To Be A Rogue’ is out now! This is a perfect chance to get in on this series, with a great narrator. A great guy and the defacto leader of our rabble.

Pete Hartog – Author of the novel Bloodlines, and currently working on its sequel. A great guy with a great taste in music and a fantastic name. He also has a blog you can find here, give it a read! He’s currently working on a sequel to Bloodlines.

Click here to listen to all the podcasts so far and look out for us on Spotify and Apples Music Service!

Vector Unit Regen Orphan’s War

Still on hiatus, hoping to resume it soon! Wish there was more to say at this time but, hopefully soon, soon I can catch up with what’s going on with Drake and Ava.
To catch up on the series so far, click here!

Brief Mentions

Liking what you’re hearing about Brennan and Riz? Click here to look at the short story collection of their adventures so far!

Looking for newer stuff?


Click here to order ‘The Yeti in the Snow’, the standalone Brennan and Riz Christmas story. Only available on Kindle. It may be collected in a paperback version in the future.


Click here to order Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 1 which includes ‘A Walk Through The Pleasure Gardens’


Click here to order Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 2 which includes ‘The Black Cat on the Prowl’

Click here to find me on Goodreads

And now…time for our main feature presentation…

Highway Out of the Comfort Zone

I’m sure all writers are aware of what comfort zones are, those pesky little areas in which we’re really confident in what we’re righting (even if not confident that it will be any good or that anyone else will ever want to read it). These can be anything from genre to tropes that we include because we’re familiar with them. Looking at my recent output, you’d be quite right in saying that my comfort zones are urban fantasy...that is a contemporary setting with fantastical elements.

In my case, a rude talking Rat with an ego the size of a planet, and the fact that most folklore tales are real. Writing in this setting is a blast and I’m quite comfortable in it. I know what I can get away with, I know which elements I can do best and how much I can stick it in before people get wise to me. However, as you’ve seen on this blog already, I didn’t start with Urban Fantasy.

My first couple of years writing took me down the path of Action Horror, with guns blazing against genetic monsters born from sciences hubris and humanities greed. Then I turned to my Daemon Soul stories, something akin to what I was doing before but different at the same time. I had taken a step out of my comfort zone.

I would then spend the next few years working on Daemon Soul and its follow ups, crafting new characters and new worlds, enlarging my comfort zone to cover it all. I would then take another step out by embarking on writing a couple of short stories (Which you can read here), not only had I never written short stories before, but these were more straight up horror or weird fiction. Not that I stuck with them though, as I quickly moved on to another genre altogether.

This was the time where I was planning two very different series, Vector Unit Regen and Drache Arm Luna (both of which I’ve talked about before), these were Sci Fi and Fantasy respectively, and I put a lot of work into planning them, but nothing ever came as I quickly retreated back into my comfort zone with Daemon Soul, redrafting it, seeing it as my only hope of getting published...Of course I did try other ideas, try to branch out but I was getting stuck in the rut, a rut of my own making.

I found myself clinging to my comfort zone, afraid of attempting anything too radical, and found my writing stagnating. This led to me writing less and less. There was other reasons behind the scenes but the effect was still the same, till I read about the Crossing the Tees festival. I’ll spare the full details of Brennan and Riz’s first adventure as regular readers of the blog will know it quite well now. Writing that though pushed me out of my comfort zone for two reasons, one) it was a serious competition, so I was putting my all into it, editing it till perfection and two) it was first person, and I had so so experience in working in that perspective.

You all know the story after that, the next year I entered the Crossing the Tees festival again, with a radically different piece again, a sci fi short based around the idea of an Alien tour guide taking different aliens to Middlesbrough, a place near me. To date, this remains my only science fiction work to be traditionally published. It wasn’t till I heard and entered the Write Festival that I really stepped out of my comfort zone (which grew to encompass Brennan and Riz). Like the first Crossing the Tees, this competition had a theme that we had to adhere to. The theme for this one? It had to be uplifting. This was going to be a challenge.

At first I took it to be that the piece had to be happy, but I soon realised that as long as one part was uplifting then it didn’t matter. I left the realm of fantasy and stepped into reality. The story I wrote, ‘A Portrait Named Hope’ told the story of a depressed Painter who’s life is changed, finding a new reason to continue. This was so unlike anything that I’d written before that a few people who I’d shown it to before couldn’t believe I’d wrote it. I took this as a compliment.

This brings me to this years Crossing the Tees, where once again I’m going to take a leap out of my comfort zone, not to the extent that I’m doing historical romance, there is limits to what I can do...I haven’t wrote it yet so I can’t give too many details but I’m quite serious about giving it my all.
Now you’ve read all this and you’re probably wondering what my point was. It’s this. Comfort Zones can be a good or a bad thing depending on your perspectives. For me, going out of them give me a creative boost that I needed to re-jolt my writing, pushing me on to greater heights. It also gave me some catharsis for a few...personal demons I face.

 I guess what I’m saying is that you shouldn’t feel afraid of trying something new if you’re tired of what your doing, you’ll never know what it will lead to.
Join me next week where folklore takes centre stage once again, till then, keep writing.