What My Eyes See

 The fuck did I just read?

Poetry is not my forte. I won't mince words about that. I went through the "angsty teen" stage where I wrote poetry (for lack of a better word). It was childish, poorly constructed, and full of bad mixed metaphors. My friends said it was good. My (soon-to-be) wife loved them. Me? I've never been happy about the works from that period of my life.

In truth, the little book with my attempts at poetry have been in the bottom of a box for years, only seeing the light of day when we packed to move. The LAST thing I want to do is open one of those and relive the acute embarrassment they cause, like the memory of that time in fifth grade when I sneezed while laughing in the lunchroom and blew long, stringy ropes of mucus into my cupped hands.

Which is a story for another day.

All of that poetry rhymed, at first. I knew then that poems came in all forms: free-verse, haikus (*shudder*), limericks, sonnets, couplets, triplets, en passant, Capulets, monoliths, etc. (I may have confused some of these.) But, in my mind, poetry rhymed. I branched out, and later entries were more free-verse.

What I'm trying to say is, my poetry sucks.

I haven't even attempted to write a poem for years, possibly a decade. Even when it fit the personality of a character in one of my stories. Hell, lets be honest, most times I just don't GET poetry. I can visualize through prose. Most poems leave me lost. There are exceptions, such as Robert Frost, Longfellow, and Sylvia Plath. But their verse seems more straightforward to me. In a Creative Writing class in college, our instructor told us that the best poetry was simply prose broken up in irregular segments to emphasize key elements.

All that having been said, I felt a poem forming in my head earlier tonight. I just finished The Bell Jar, one of many wonderful books I picked up for a song at the Colby Library's book sale this Summer. It was my first introduction to Plath. After the story's end, there was a biography that included several of her poems. These drove me to look up more of her work online. (I love the internet!)

Now I suffer from that bane of the writer: an idea that won't shut the fuck up. So, here's my first attempt at poetry since Clinton left office. If you survived my self-indulgent rant above, this might be the thing that causes your aneurysm. Don't say you haven't been warned...



Only see what my eyes see
no matter what lies before
those things life intends for me
Only see what my eyes see.

Birds, bees, autumn leaves
disappear in a stiff breeze
and the sky opens up to breathe
Only see what my eyes see.

Gathered wisdom of learned men
so many words bound by pen.
Only see what my eyes see
despite the world around me.

Am I blind, devoid of sense,
bitter rage or innocence,
the whites are black, the iris bleached.
Only see what my eyes see.


Daniel P. Coffman

The "L" Word

I finally have a new laptop! (cue Theme From Rocky)

That may not seem like a big deal to most people. But, to an author, that can mean the difference between 500 words a day and 5,000. Especially when the "L" key doesn't work.

At first, this gave me no end of amusement, laughing at the words and phrases that appeared in my writing: "She ooked at him with ove in her eyes." Funny as hell. Unfortunately, I am the type who cannot ignore a misspelling or grammar mistake if I see it. Which means I was constantly eying up that irritating red squiggle, trying to continue the narrative, then giving up and going back to punch the "L" hard enough to leave a mark. It was like working on a faulty typewriter.

(Note to people born in 1990 or after: A "typewriter" was an ancient device people used for writing before word processors and computers.)

(Additional note to those born in 1995 or later: A "word processor" was an electronic typewriter.)

(Note to those born after the year 2000: The word "electronic" refers to... never mind.)

Anyhoo...  By the time I was getting to the end of my rope with that, the "N" key was malfunctioning intermittently. Also, the old laptop refused to stay online. There was a "WiFi" button on the front that had to be physically held to the right to stay on the internet. Eventually, even that didn't work, so I had to plug an old LAN card into the USB to stay on, but that had terrible connectivity, which made researching topics for my book, or advertising my previous work a nightmare.

Now, I'm averaging about 2,000 - 5,000 words a day.  I'm far less distracted while writing because there are almost no squiggly red lines to draw my eye. (Except for the occasional typo, that is.) The only downside is the EXTRA "L's" that come from the habit of hitting the key twice because I assume it didn't take the first time. That can get realllly annoying.

 I finished writing my newest book on the old laptop. Considering that it ended up being over 130,000 words, I don't feel bad about how long it took. My next book, which is in the works, will be a collection of short stories. The first story, a haunted house-type tale, is almost done. The next three (or four; I haven't decided) should not take too long.

I'm waiting on my initial editor, my wife Brenda, to read the epic and give me her much-needed feedback before making my edits and sending it out to be reviewed. So, don't expect that book, an end-of-the-world story, until Spring of 2015.

(Obligatory self-promotion to follow)

While you wait, why not give my first book, Four From Below, a read? It's available in paperback and ebook through Amazon, and also in paperback through Createspace.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

Daniel P. Coffman

HOW Many Words?

So, because of a faulty laptop, I ended up handwriting my book. Anyone who knows me understands that I hate handwriting ANYTHING, especially stories. There are three reasons for this:

-I type faster than I write
-editing is a nightmare
-my handwriting is awful

Seriously, it's terrible. If I do not reread what I've written within a couple of weeks, I won't be able to decipher what it says. So, I'm currently typing the handwritten pages into the computer, and it is taking forever. For. Ev. ER! At my last estimation, this thing is clocking in at approximately 125,000 words.

Did I mention that the laptop I am using is a oaner, and that the letter "L" only works half of the time. (By the way, I left that typo in as an example of my "L" problem.) Part of the problem is that I write better when I am not at home. We used to go to town twice a week, for shopping and doctor appointments. Brenda and I would always stop somewhere for a bite to eat, take out our notebooks (I actually used loose-leaf paper on a clipboard), and write for an hour or so.

Now that BOTH of our vehicles are not working properly (electrical problem with the truck and a blown strut on the car), I am always at home, surrounded by distractions. I planned on having this latest book done and published by July of this year, one year after publishing Four From Below. But this thing is eating me alive. It's grown from a nightmare I had a few years ago, to a short story idea, to a book idea, to (apparently) my magnum fucking opus.

Seriously, 125k? What the hell happened?

And I still feel like I didn't tell the whole story. It nags at me. Which is why I'm ADDING content as I type, instead of editing things out. Not good. Hopefully, I'll have it finished and published by the end of this year, but even that seems ambitious at this point. After it's typed up, Brenda will get first crack at editing, then I go over her notes and do my own. Then a third party edits this draft, and so on, and so on.

I just hope it lives up to all this hype and pressure. And a few missing "L's".

Daniel P. Coffman

What's In a Name?

This is the first post on my “author blog”. Just typing that seems… odd. Weird. With only one book published, and another on the way, I find it hard to use the “author” moniker in reference to myself.

While thinking up a title for this little act of self-indulgence, I decided to utilize the title of my first book, and the first story contained within. Four From Below is a collection of horror stories, a novella and three short stories, the first of which is titled “Help From Below”. You’ll have to read it to find out why. I suppose it makes more sense to name this the “Author Daniel P. Coffman Official Blog” or something equally pretentious. But I can’t bring myself to do that.

So, when I have several books published, this blog will seem strange. “Why did he name it after one book that isn’t part of a series or even have a sequel?” I imagine my hordes of fans will cry out in consternation.

Or not.

The short answer is: I like the title. The first story in the collection was always going to be called “Help From Below”. The name occurred to me at the same time as the concept. When my wife and I decided to make it part of a collection, the title of such seemed… obvious. Four horror stories. Four tales of things that are not as thy seem. Our nightmares from the depths of one’s psyche. Four… from below.

So there you have : the origin of Words From Below. Let me know when it starts to sound really wrong. Not that I’ll change it. I like making people feel weird. Read my book and you’ll find that out for yourself.

Daniel P. Coffman