Tag: Forever Candy

End of 2025

Posted on by Robert Tomoguchi
My Tops for 2025

I was happy with the reader response to Entry 79: “Hagfish”—the final entry of the first journal of My Darling Tragedy. They were surprised with how the journal ended. After taking a break to work on the other novel (Forever Candy) I’m doing my best to get caught up with My Darling Tragedy. The first three entries of the second journal have already posted, and I have six more ready. But I need to get to eight in pocket to feel comfortable. I’m on winter recess from work right now, so that gives me more time to write, but because of a project I have due in January, I also must work in the office while everyone else is out on break.

I’ve done a lot of story building already for the second journal, much more than I did at this point with the first journal. I think the second journal will appeal most to readers who, among the trilogy, preferred Scribbling the Eternal. There’s going to be a few storylines going. I’m even writing some of the Yelena/Marcel story which I received requests for as a prequel after The Scribbled Victims was published.

I’ve kept up walking at least 5,000 steps per day. Today’s walk will be 70 days in a row. I’m generally getting between 7,000 and 8,000 steps each day. I see my doctor tomorrow. He’ll be happy. A recent blood test showed dramatic improvements. At this rate, maybe I’ll live long enough to write ten journals.

This is my last blog post of 2025 which means I must mention my favorite reads for the year. Number one would be The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I had read it in 2014, but it hit me a lot harder this year as I think I paid more attention to the writing than only the story. My runner up read of the year would be The Vagrants by Li Yiyun. This year, I also want to mention the music I listened to. I’m certain my most listened to song was Almond Chocolate by ILLIT; it even appears in Entry 45: “Petals” of My Darling Tragedy. But my Spotify Year-End summary notified me I was the 533 top listener of ILLIT globally. I knew I listened to them a lot (I’m listening right now while writing this), but I had no idea I’d rank that high when they have millions of listeners. That made me happy.

This post makes 2025 sound good, and in some ways, it was, but overall, I think it was a sad year, considering the state of the world—open genocide, wars, famine, wealth inequality—and here at home with the continued dismantling of our democracy and our acceptance of racist policies. I’m hoping 2026 will bring with it some repairs, but I don’t believe a single year can bring enough.

Ahead

Posted on by Robert Tomoguchi
My new MacBook Air
My new MacBook Air

I ordered a new MacBook Air. Even though I probably didn’t need to, I splurged on an M3 processor because I figure I’ll have this laptop for at least six years. I had to wait longer for it to arrive because I also ordered 1TB of storage. But even after it arrived, it took me 17 days to open the box, because getting new things (especially tech stuff) often stresses me out. But I finally opened the box and on Saturday, I wrote in public again for the first time in weeks.

I took this week off from work to write. I had been struggling recently and slipped behind in schedule to where I was only six weeks ahead. Though I’ve been spending a lot of my break sleeping, I’m working very hard while I am awake and am already again eight weeks ahead. At the outset, it was my goal to end up ten weeks ahead, but at the rate I’m going, maybe I’ll end up ahead by eleven weeks.

I’m pretty happy with how Orly’s Journals is going again. I did end up slowing things down a little, or at least it feels like it’s going in that direction. I’ve given a longer view to her relationships with Vance and Silviu and it’s made things feel more real and less constructed.

Right now, I’m at Starbucks, listening to Deafheaven, sitting at a communal table where three highschoolers are shooting a boomerang of them doing a cheers with their grande cups, and my phone is blowing up with MS Teams messages. (Apparently someone Zoom bombed the Budget Forum today and something inappropriate appeared on screen—the things you miss out on while on vacation.) I just finished Entry 48: “Cap” which I began writing yesterday. It’s a complicated entry and was difficult to get the ending right.  

I might write more later, but now, I think I’m going to switch gears and read War and Peace. My second goal during my vacation was to finish it. I’m in the Epilogue now. My third goal was to go to the gym every day for just 30 minutes, but that hasn’t happened once. I think the chances would increase if I didn’t sleep so much.

I was just thinking… If I could ever get enough weeks ahead, maybe twenty, maybe I’d step away and try to do a writing sprint of Forever Candy just to get it all down and then I could clean it up at a slower pace while writing Orly. I really want to write that story. It’s just a thought, but maybe I should make it a goal.

 

 

Announcing Orly’s Journals

Posted on by Robert Tomoguchi

Announcing Orly's JournalsSo, way back when I last posted in March, I talked about writing two stories at once, because one was good for providing the regularity I need for maintaining my mood and the other because it excited me. Well guess what happened? I put both of them down. I know that sounds bad but let me continue because it’s actually good.

When I woke on April 5, I was thinking about Patreon and had the idea of writing there in serial form, a new novel made of journal entries penned by my character Orly Bialek, picking up where The Black Wax Vampire Trilogy ended. This concept excited me more than anything I’ve felt in years. I kicked around the idea for a few days and then decided to go for it, and it was then that I put down the other two books.

So, for the past two months, this is what I’ve been working on every single day. I’ve been writing as Orly again and building the Patreon page which launched a few days ago. I plan to release a journal entry there every Thursday evening.

Today is Thursday. Her first journal entry drops tonight.

I have no regrets putting the other two books on hold as writing Orly again makes me feel happy. I do have fears though. I’ve never written in serial form, and her POV is slightly different because of the nature of journaling. But more than that, I feel like some series continue long past what is beneficial to the thrust of the story and the universe created. Though I love what I’m doing now and look forward to releasing the installments, I hope I recognize when to stop.

So, if you enjoyed her trilogy or are new to Orly and want to read a new vampire story, I hope you’ll check out Orly’s Journals.

Two Books At Once

Posted on by Robert Tomoguchi

I’m still working on turning Exhume into a novel. I’ve been at it for seventy days straight. I’m making incremental progress, averaging 130 new words a day. The more I work on it though, the less sure I feel I want to show it to anyone. To be honest, the more I work on it, the less excited I feel about it. This might be because I’m struggling to develop the characters beyond the screenplay version. It might also be because I’m writing in third person, present tense, which I’ve never done before. I chose this as it felt closest to the way a screenplay is written.

Recently, I had this thought of writing Forever Candy from a different point-of-view. The last time I tried writing it, I was writing from Candy’s POV, in first person. But now I’m thinking of writing it from Burrows’ POV. I’ve tried that before, but only in third person. For some reason it never occurred to me to write him from first person. I wrote a little, just to try it out, and I got really excited about it.

I talked to my shrink about this quandary of mine—which story to pursue now. Even though I’m struggling with the Exhume story, she and I both belief that the regularity in which I’ve been writing it has really improved my mood and helped pull me out of my last depression. We’re wary of me walking away from that. On the other hand, I’m so excited to write this other story right now, that I feel like I should seize the opportunity of inspiration.

My shrink suggested I work on both, simultaneously. I can keep making my little daily progress on Exhume, while also embracing the excitement I feel with writing a different book. When she said it, it baffled me because I’ve never written two books at once. When I wrote The Last Midnight, feeling inspired, I had to put Scribbles of the Empress down completely, even though I was already 40,000 words into it, and I only picked it back up after I had finished.

So, I guess I’m going to give it a go, writing two books at once. Wish me luck.

Yellowface by R.F. KuangI’ve been going to the gym regularly and counting calories on MyFitnessPal because my doctor told me I really need to lose weight. In twelve weeks, I’ve lost 18 lbs. While on the treadmill last week, I listened to Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. A friend from Silent Book Club told me she had read it. She mentioned what a despicable character the POV characters is, but I really enjoyed the character and found myself relating to her. This wasn’t because I want to or ever would plagiarize another author (but if I did, it would be Kwon Yeo-sun and her book Lemon, LOL), but because, as a mediocre writer, I know all too well what it feels like to be jealous of writers who have more talent than I’ll ever have. While listening to Yellowface, I was really impressed with and jealous of the author with how smart and sharp her writing is. She’s super gifted.

I don’t know if it was that book or other books I’ve read recently (For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Road, All the Lovers in the Night), but I’ve glimpsed the dawning of me giving up as a writer, feeling like I’m just not talented enough to write something worthy of the readership I daydream of having. Mediocrity is a dreadful thing to feel.

I know it’s not over just yet though. I’m going to try to keep going, fueled by my hopes that Forever Candy will be a good book. Again, wish me luck.

Grasshopper

Posted on by Robert Tomoguchi

My Favorite Reads of Another blog lapse. I haven’t posted here since August. This is only my fifth post of 2023 and it’s the last day of the year. Maybe it seems remiss of me not to have posted since August, but I haven’t had anything noteworthy to mention. Since that last post, I’ve just been spinning my wheels, going in circles, and getting nowhere. I tried working on I Was Mistaken, like I mentioned, but it became painful to write. My shrink said a little discomfort is okay, but what I was doing was retraumatizing myself. I then went back to writing about Tara Raikatuji but couldn’t find her voice and so I completed another lap around my circle of stories by returning to Forever Candy. I struggled with the same point of view problems I’ve always had with that story, and my last attempt read back so lifelessly that it made me think of a desiccated grasshopper, if that’s a thing. This week, I pulled out a screenplay I wrote in 2008 about a cellist. It’s kind of a haunted house story. I’m kicking around having a go at novelizing it and it feels fresh because it’s not yet part of my traditional merry-go-round of stories that I tinker with then give up on. I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere though.

So that’s what I’ve been doing since August, even though I’ve written every day for the past 48 days. I’ve been forcing myself to write for a minimum of ten minutes a day to try to get something going. Though I haven’t made any progress on any of my projects, forcing myself to write like this has at least awakened whatever it is that allows me to daydream. I’m hoping this will soon lead me to finding solutions with my current stories or thinking of something entirely new.

I’m going to remember 2023 as the year I had writer’s block. I’ll also remember it as the year I read All the Lovers in the Night and Kokoro. It’s also the year I deleted Twitter, and deactivated my author Instagram and TikTok. I decided only to keep my personal accounts (@deadponies). My author accounts felt like a collection of promotional posts for my books rather than showing anything about me as a person. Hopefully, the posts about me are more interesting than my advertisements.

I really hope I get through this writer’s block soon. I can’t have another year like this. I was thinking about pretending I got an agent and a book deal so I can give myself a deadline to finish something—anything.

Goodbye 2023.

Hello 2024.

Mistaken

Posted on by Robert Tomoguchi

In my last post, way back in May, I said I chose to write and began writing Forever Candy as a novel. Today, in August, I’m letting you know I stopped. It fizzled out weeks ago. The voice I was writing in just fell flat. It didn’t feel authentic. I considered starting over in a different voice, but right now, I think I must walk away from it. Maybe someday I’ll try again.  

I finished my first UCLA Extension Creative Writing class, but I dropped the second class.

In the weeks since I stopped writing, I’ve become depressed. I feel adrift and without purpose. But I’ve been putting in a lot of effort in my sessions with my psychologist. I recently began considering writing about my childhood best friend. In the preceding post, titled Pushpins, our story is laid out in the fourth row of note cards and is something I intended to weave into another story I refer to as Candela.

Writing about my childhood best friend is something I think I can only write privately, without the intention of anyone ever seeing it. I think it’s essential in order to tell our story honestly. 

So, for the readers I do have, you may not get anything new from me for a long while.

Delete TwitterI deleted my Twitter accounts. I think Facebook will be on the chopping block next. Social media has proven to be more detrimental than beneficial for me, and after being off it for over 180 days now, the feelings of FOMO rarely surface.

I feel like disappearing. 

I told my psychologist that by my next session I would open a new Scrivener document and save it for the new writing project. That next session is tomorrow. I’ve been struggling with what to save it as for a working title. I could stick with calling it Candela, but I feel like I should start fresh. I’m leaning toward saving it as I Was Mistaken.  

Pushpins

Posted on by Robert Tomoguchi

Bulletin Board of Notecards
Three stories in notecards.

I know my last two blog posts suggested I was leaning toward writing a novel version of Filming Tara Raikatuji, but I no longer think it’s going to be my next project. I took six days off from my day job, with the intention of resting before my busy fiscal closing period. On Thursday I mapped out the three stories I’ve been kicking around in my head using note cards to identify the major beats of each story. I typically lay out six beats per story. The stories were Filming Tara Raikatuji, Forever Candy, and something I for now just refer to as Candela. The Candela story has two rows of cards because there are two parallel stories in it. I pinned them to my bulletin board but ran out of pushpins. I don’t know how that happened. I’ve had many more cards on this board before. Anyhow, I felt good after pinning the cards up because it told me I did have things I’d be able to write from beginning to end. In general, I won’t start writing until I know my beginning and ending.

I spent the rest of the day and Friday evaluating which of the three stories I should pursue, and I landed on Forever Candy. It’s the least brave story to write because it’s the least personal, but I chose it for two reasons. The first is that I’ve been worrying about what writing I can share if I continue in this creative writing program at UCLA Extension, because it’s online, and so the instructor and students are all faceless and I don’t find myself getting to know them. I realized that it’s difficult for me to share drafts of things that are very personal with people I don’t know. The second reason is that it’s my goal to traditionally publish my next book, and I think Forever Candy is the easiest to explain and the most marketable.

Saturday, I wrote a prologue for Forever Candy. It was only five hundred words, but it was a beginning, and I’m still happy with how it came out. Yesterday, I pushed myself to shift settings and begin the first chapter. After a couple hours, I only settled on the first three sentences—32 words. But it’s a start. I’m a little intimidated to embark on this book because I’m writing in third person, which I don’t typically do. I also have a major character who’s male, something else I’m not accustomed to if I’m not that male, and especially after spending the last eight years writing Orly Bialek.

But hey, the point is, I began something I feel like I might be able to write all the way to its ending. As always happens at the beginning of any writing project, I think I’ll be able to write this story quickly, in this case, a year. If history is any indication, it’ll likely be at least two years. At least I’m writing again. Yay me.

Okayo, my Love Village favorite.
Okayo, my Love Village crush.

On a totally unrelated note, can I mention just how much I love the new show on Netflix, Love Village? It’s a more mature version of Ainori Love Wagon, which I absolutely loved and made me cry more than any other show I’ve watched. Love Village is making me gush buckets too. If I have any influence over my readers, I highly recommend.

Candy in Amsterdam

Posted on by Robert Tomoguchi

I’m vacationing in Amsterdam, so I haven’t been able to write every day as I had been. But today, I finally found some time to hang out at a three story cafe and write until I felt too shaky from all the coffee I drank. I believe I finally found Candy’s voice. 

There is a similarity between this narrative and the narrative in The Scribbled Victims. Many readers of The Scribbled Victims don’t realize immediately that it is Orly narrating the book. I drop a hint at it in the very first chapter when she interrupts her storytelling to say that she wished that she looked like Yelena. Because of that, a reviewer criticized me of switching from third person to first person, even though it was first person all along. 

Anyhow, Candy will be narrating the story of a man named Burrows, but similarly it is all in her voice. It should be more clear from the get go this time. Who knows, maybe this style will become my thing. 

Thirty Minutes

Posted on by Robert Tomoguchi

I’m back to writing every day. I think it’s important that I write every day so that I stay present in my work and also because with writing on my mind all day, I’m generally happier and feel less despair working a day job. This idea to start writing every day again came out of a recent session with my psychologist. For the past three years or so, I’ve only been writing on weekends, because I had been feeling so overworked at my day job because of some projects I was involved with. My psychologist at the time and I decided it would be best for my stress level to stop writing every day. It helped with the stress certainly, but it was ultimately a detriment to my happiness and my feeling of having a purpose. Those projects are over now. I don’t know why I didn’t think of going back to writing every day on my own, and needed a therapy session to come up with the idea, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter.

Needless to say, I am thrilled to be writing every day again. I feel so much more alive. True, I only set a goal to write for thirty minutes a day. But I set an easy goal as a strategy. It’s easy to find thirty minutes in a day. It’s easy to have enough motivation to sit down for only thirty minutes. But the truth is, it never ends after thirty minutes. I become so consumed with what I’m working on that it can go on for hours. And during that time and the hours following, I feel inspired and excited. 

This week I’ve been writing and rewriting a prologue for a novel version of Forever Candy. (It was originally a screenplay.) Though I’m not nearly satisfied with the writing (I don’t think I found the right voice or style for the book), I feel exhilarated just working on it.