Okay, so, maybe I don’t have what it takes to be a good daddy and an author. See, fear has a lot of power. It can be blinding, crippling, even fatal. People become completely paralyzed at the sight of a tiny spider. Grown adults are reduced to tears at the sound of thunder. People who taken their own lives because of voices whispering to them in the darkness. As someone who writes thrillers and horror, I am fascinated by the lengths people will go to avoid what frightens them. The human mind’s ability to be manipulated is something I love to take advantage of in my writing. But, obviously, I am not immune. I once considered myself, for the most part, fearless. I don’t really have a phobia. I despise needles, but as long as I don’t see them, I can avoid throwing nurses out of hospital windows. Sometimes I feel like I am suffocating if in too tight of a space. Perhaps I am mildly claustrophobic, but come on, either you have it or you don’t, right? I’ve jumped out of plan...

October. The weather cools, and the air turns crisp. Leaves change color and paint the Colorado mountainsides gold. Pumpkin patches swarm with excited children. We get out the grease paint, fake blood, faux tombstones, and laughing skeletons to celebrate all things scary and openly welcome fear into our lives. (Depending on the ticket price for our favorite haunted house, we sometimes pay big bucks to scream and pee down our legs.)   Fear, however, is all too real. We have fun with it for a few weeks but, when October ends, our true fears stay with us just like that twenty-pound sack of Trick-or-Treat candy on top of the fridge. Fear is necessary. It motivates us, strengthens us, helps us face life’s darker moments and keep moving. Fear exists in almost every aspect of our lives, whether we realize it or not. What trembles your knees? Spiders, clowns, needles, large crowds, tight spaces, in-laws, no wifi, life without Starbucks? Over the course of this month, all of us here...

For the February theme of Males in Romance, I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing Romantic Comedy author Rich Amooi . I hope that you find as much joy in his responses as I did. His bio will be included below the interview, as well as links to where you can learn more about this fantastic author. Please allow me to introduce Rich Amooi.  Jason: You were once an on-air DJ, which had to be a fun career. What made you decide to become an author? Rich:   It was a lot of fun and I had an amazing radio career that spanned thirty-three years. Part of that career included writing and producing radio commercials. My favorite commercials to write were comedy sketches where two people were talking, the product magically appeared, and they lived happily-ever-after with that product. My wife loved some of the commercials and encouraged me to take creative writing classes at Stanford to get into fiction writing. I had been considering writing movie scripts at the time ...

Jason P. Henry: I’m taking a break from my usual Dream Chaser posts here at The Blood Red Pencil, and directing a month of theme-writing from the male perspective. You see, a few months ago I found my work taking an unexpected detour. Instead of writing about the usual monsters, dead bodies, psychopaths, and serial killers, I found myself writing something very dark.  Romance.                      Believe me, I was just as surprised as you. Not once, since my first word as a writer, had I considered writing a romance novel. But, there I was. After a closer look at the genre, one thing I noticed was an absence of male authors. When I dug a little deeper, the few male authors I found were working under female pseudonyms. Naturally, many questions came to mind. I decided to look a little more inward for the answers. What had been my own aversion to romance all this time? Was it bec...

Friday the 13 th ? (It hurts to avoid the obvious and the easy, but I shall resist.) The last few months have seen me writing a little less, and working on who I want to be as a writer a lot more. I know, writers write, or so they say. But writers are also CEOs of a business. My company is called Jason P. Henry and, for a period of time, my company seemed as though it lost its direction. So, it was time to develop a new business plan. A business built on a writer… how could that lose direction? All a writer has to do is sit down, put fingers on the keyboard, take a breath, and spew out a best-seller. Then find an agent (most likely the first one we query will fall in love with our work), the agent finds a publisher within a couple of days, and a few weeks later we’re signing for thousands of people at a bookstore reading. That about sums up the path to success, correct? Anyone who has considered taking this road knows it’s is not an easy one to travel. It’s definitely not a qu...

I was different from most kids growing up. When they ran to get inside before darkness settled, I wanted to stay out longer. I wanted to see the moon, watch the bats do their aerial dances in its beams. I wanted to walk through the woods and see the glowing eyes staring back from just beyond the shadows. I wasn’t worried about monsters. So many associate darkness with evil, hatred, and depression. For me, it’s just the opposite. For me, the reality was that the real terrors happened in daylight and the darkness was (and still is) my sanctuary. In the dark I find peace, a comforting silence. The world settles down, the hustle and bustle slows. Lights dim, the sun falls, and everything takes on a sense of calm. The air cools, becomes crisp, and I take a deep breath and relax. I guess it comes back to that word ‘monster’. I suppose we all have our own ideas of what a monster is and everyone is haunted by something. My path to success has been one of many celebrations, but it hasn’t...

I’ve always been adventurous. Skydiving, hiking, mountain climbing, exploring strange places, and much more. Often, I stray from the beaten path, venturing into unknown territory. Even though I do these things from an educated approach, there are always risks and dangers. They say it’s the ones who know better who often find themselves in the most trouble. I don’t know who ‘they’ are… but they are right. Let’s start with a true story: As I said, I am adventurous but I know all the rules, precautions, protocols, and I’m a firm believer in being over prepared. But, I’m not perfect. Not long ago, my girlfriend and I decided it was a good day to drive to the mountains. We loaded two dogs into our 4x4 and headed up Rampart Range Road. We didn’t pack hiking gear or supplies since we only intended to drive. We came across Rampart Reservoir. Wanting to walk the dogs, we stopped. We had water in the trunk, but since we were just taking the dogs for a short walk, we left the water behind. ...

Over the last few years I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to meet many successful authors. I have listened to their stories and learned from them. Two things are certain: Every writer’s path to success is seemingly different, but they all begin with a passion for books and knowledge. I’ve learned that best-selling authors are not mutants with special powers. They’re human. They are people who have had ‘real jobs’ and regular lives, who have struggled, and have doubted themselves. But they have also persevered, standing steadfast in the pursuit of their dreams. They believed in what they were doing and kept writing until they found their place on a bookstore shelf. My own path has been anything but conventional. Until about seven years ago, the idea of being a writer never crossed my mind. However, like so many writers, I have been obsessed with books and knowledge since childhood. I always preferred books over television and read encyclopedias like many kids read comics. ...

When I first began moodling the main characters in my murder mystery series  - a high-powered attorney who is a partner in the family law firm, and his new bride, a child psychologist and writer - they were mostly just the perfect couple on whom I could hang my social justice plots. But the two of them had different ideas about how their relationship, and their life together, would develop. First, both developed a strong focus toward building their rural kingdom (it's just a setting, damnit!), and before long, having children and raising a family became a huge issue, especially for my heroine. How do characters take over like that? Soon I found myself searching for photos of the perfect redheaded boy to enter the story (perhaps in book #3 after the heroine suffers some fertility anguish?), instead of teaching readers about the dangers of GMO crops, fracking, and other really important stuff. Children add elements to fiction that completely change the dynamics of a story...

By Jason P. Henry Throughout my life I have been an artist, a musician, and now a writer. Creativity runs thick in my blood. As a result, I have spent (perhaps wasted) a lot of time seeking the muse. She was such an elusive, fleeting, little tart. I always felt like I was three steps behind her, that I didn’t have what it took to catch up and drain her of the inspiration I desperately needed. I was a vampire, thirsty for that creative rich blood, and I was dehydrating. Then I learned a valuable lesson about her. She was there, within my grasp, the whole time. My muse , she’s a stalker. The whole time I was looking for her, she was standing right behind me, waiting for me to turn around so she could smack me and say, ‘Here I am, stupid, now sit your butt down and write.’ When I learned, better yet, when I accepted , how devious my muse truly is, I stopped looking for her. I simply started waiting for those subtle, sucker punches and her sultry, little voice seductively whispering...

Remember that kid in the back of the class who was never talked to? Who was never picked for teams? That nerdy runt who was stuffed in lockers, got food thrown at him, got pushed around in the halls? The boy all the girls laughed at while saying ‘Not if he was the last boy on earth’? That was me. I was bullied on a regular basis. I had the freckles, goofy haircut, skinny frame, and I was smart. I was the student who always raised his hand for questions, and always gave the right answer. Until I decided being smart wasn’t cool. It seemed my intelligence played a big factor in getting the crap kicked out of me. So I stopped raising my hand, stopped showing my intelligence. I tried hiding even deeper in the vague identity of ‘that boy”. But it didn’t help. It was freshman year when I reached my breaking point. I had enough and one unlucky bully got every ounce of frustration and anger I had inside me. He put me in a headlock and laughed. I didn’t find it funny at all. I wormed m...