Ken Fite

Writing can be such a rollercoaster sometimes. It’s so interesting to me how I can go days, weeks, sometimes months without adding many words, then, out of nowhere, it’s like the floodgates open. Sometimes, I think of it like a wave coming in from the ocean. If you time it right, you can catch the wave at just the right time and ride it a long ways.

On that note, I finished the first draft of my new novel this month, and I’m halfway through the second draft, so I’m making great progress and riding the wave as far as I can. But while I see a clear path to the finish line, I’ve decided I should take my time with it. Because the greatest gift you can give someone this holiday season is your time, and when my kids want to spend time with me, I want to be able to tell them yes.

When my oldest wants to play basketball with me, I want to say yes.

And when my youngest wants to throw the football, I want to say yes.

When the family wants to spend time together watching a movie, I want to say yes.

One day, the house won’t be so noisy. One day, the boys won’t want any of my time. They’ll be all grown up, too cool to hang out with dad. These moments will all be gone.

But the books will always be there, waiting on me to write.

This holiday season, ask yourself if the things you think are urgent really are so. As much as I want to get this new book out, I don’t want to miss the important things that happen at home, either. Spend time with the people you care about while you can. Because one day, when you look up from your busy life, they won’t be there anymore.

Make no mistake—I have big goals, and I’m still dead set on making them a reality. And I’m going to get this new book out as soon as I can. But not sooner than I have to.

Because it’s important to keep our eyes and hearts open to finding the moments that matter. And when they happen, we need to be there. Have a great December. -Ken

Happy Halloween! Tonight I’ll be taking my kids trick or treating and I can’t wait. I’m especially looking forward to collecting Dad Tax after they fall asleep tonight. The current tax rate is at 15% (inflation, baby), so we should all make out pretty good.

The boys are getting so big. With one being sixteen and the other twelve, I wonder how many more Halloweens they’ll be dressing up for. My oldest will be a basketball player, sporting Michael Jordan’s number 23 on his jersey, and my youngest will be a sumo wrestler. It’s so funny seeing him wear the outfit. It fills with air and expands so big lol!

I made a lot of progress on the new book this month, adding over 16,000 words in October, and should have a major update to share with you in next month’s newsletter.

One thing I’ve been trying to do better at lately is improving my mindset when it comes to writing. A few weeks ago I came across a post online that had the following words:

Laziness kills ambition

Anger kills wisdom

Fear kills dreams

Ego kills growth

Jealousy kills peace

Doubt kills confidence

These are all truths I think we can agree on. These are all things that make sense. When it comes to writing books, many of these things apply. Sometimes, okay often, I do feel lazy for not writing fast enough. I do fear I won’t see my dreams come true. And I do get a little jealous of author friends of mine who can crank out a book in a month, effortlessly, like it’s no big deal, and do it over and over again. I let the doubts creep in.

Now scroll back up and read those sentences again.

This time from right to left.

Aren’t those things also true? If you focus on the right part of the sentence first?

Sometimes when you change the way you look at things the things you look at change.

Have a great November. -Ken

I’m continuing to make great progress on Blake Jordan #11 and added another 10,000 words in September. My goal is to finish the first draft by the end of October. Then it’ll be a race to the finish as I write another couple of drafts in November with a launch in December. As usual, I’ll release the book on Kindle first, then the paperback after that.

I’d be lying if I said the writing was easy. Especially nowadays. Vince Flynn, who was one of my favorite authors and wrote the great Mitch Rapp series, used to say how difficult it was for him to focus on his writing during an election year. I definitely agree. This election has been crazier than in the past. There always seems to be another news story coming out that tops the last one. And don’t forget about any October surprises heading our way. Focusing on writing, or anything else worthwhile, is hard!

What we have to remember is that distractions aren’t harmless fun little things that we waste our time on. They make or break us. They are quite literally the killers of dreams.

But the ability to see our dreams come true often comes down to the making of a single difficult choice of which we prefer: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.

Because if you want to make a dent in this world you’ll have to choose one or the other.

While it might not be possible to starve all of our distractions, especially over the next 30 days, remember that you can’t do big things if you’re distracted by the little things. Here’s to another productive month and to keeping the dream killers in check. -Ken

I’m making progress on Blake Jordan #11, slow and steady, one word after another. I added 10,000 words in August towards a 75,000 goal. Which is better than zero. I also hit the midpoint in the book which means I’m halfway there. But still a long way to go.

Some days I don’t get to write as much as I’d like. Or at all. But I learned long ago that each day is a battle in the war. You may win. Or you may lose. But you have to fight. And for those who keep on fighting, eventually, you’ll win if you can just hang in there…

It’s easy to view our works in progress as not enough. Maybe the goals you set for yourself haven’t been realized yet. Maybe you don’t have the promotion you want yet. Or like me you haven’t made as much progress on a manuscript as you would’ve liked.

But remember…

Someone else is wishing they were your age again.

Someone else is needing that job you dread going to.

Someone else is dreaming of the home you complain about.

Someone else is praying to have the health you take for granted.

Someone else is wishing they could’ve written their first novel by now.

When we’re in a fight, struggling to get what we want, it’s easy to forget that we already have what we need: the blessings we have now that we used to dream about long ago.

Don’t let difficult times let you forget your blessings. Here’s to staying in the fight. -Ken

Last month I wrote about a plan I had for making slow but steady progress towards finishing my next novel. But, as they say: no plan survives first contact with the enemy.

The problem was with the last several news cycles. Former presidents and assassination attempts, current presidents no longer seeking reelection, and as a political thriller writer, doing my own research around conspiracy theories for both.

If I was writing the story, would agents be in on it? Would there be a second shooter? Would there be powerful men in dark, smoke-filled rooms threatening to invoke the 25th amendment against a sitting president unless their demands were met? My imagination shifts into overdrive as I wonder what’s happening behind the scenes.

The enemy, as it turns out, is distraction. The enemy we don’t like to admit is there. Because, if we’re honest, doing the work is a lot harder than giving in to the distraction.

But I’m learning to embrace the craziness. To limit consumption. To protect my time. I don’t need a lot of it to get my writing in each day. There’ll be time to catch up on the news of the day. But it has to be later. After the words are written. After goals are met.

The world will always have its headlines, but our dreams are worth prioritizing.

No plan survives first contact with the enemy. But it’s how we respond that defines us. And the battles worth fighting are the ones that brings us closer to our destiny. -Ken

I just finished the first act in the next Jordan novel. It feels great to finally, after writing ten of these things, feel like I’ve figured out how to make consistent daily progress. What’s working for me is to set a daily goal, one that’s almost impossible not to hit. Steven King writes 3,000 words a day? That’s cool, I’ll aim for 500. John Grisham writes for three or four hours a day? That’s awesome; I’m going to aim for 30 minutes.

So far the plan is working and I’m much happier with my work output. I can already tell that I’ll have much less rewriting to do. We all want to accomplish so much, but small daily wins is the best way to get there. Sometimes you have to slow down to speed up.

In the game of chess, you don’t speak. You just act. The only time you speak is when you say, “Checkmate.” It’s so easy to tell others about our hopes and dreams, the big things we want to accomplish. We post it on Facebook. We broadcast it to the world. We get likes and comments and praise. But when we sit down to do the work we stall.

Because announcing it was our reward. And I think it’s a trap. That’s why I share just enough so you know where I’m headed, but I also like to keep my cards close to the chest. Because sometimes it’s best to work in secret. Act quietly and keep achieving.

Your achievement is your checkmate.

Today marks the end of the first half of the year. The Independence Day holiday is when I like to take a step back every year to reassess my goals. Am I halfway there? Have I made progress on the right ones? What about the goals I haven’t started yet?

Six months are gone but six month are left.

It’s not too late to end the year with a checkmate. -Ken

I’m making great progress on the new novel. I have a goal to finish the first draft by the time I go to the annual writers’ conference in St. Pete Beach in September. Even more exciting, I think I may have figured out a way to write more than one book starting next year. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but… the plan is so crazy it just might work.

So, any big news lately in the world of politics? Anything to talk about, argue about, debate, get mad about, cheer over? Maybe it’s just me, but politics has really sucked me in over the last few months. I usually get engrossed in politics in an election year, but this year is insane. And just when you think things couldn’t get crazier—surprise!

How often do you spend time on things you can’t control? Especially when you have big goals you want to see come to life? I’ll raise my hand and admit that it’s all the time.

I once heard someone comparing it to running east-west on the field of life. North-south gains yards. North-south gets first downs. North-south makes incremental progress. And north-south wins ball games. But east-west does none of those things. It’s spinning your wheels, wasting your time, looking busy while getting nowhere fast.

As we inch closer to the middle of the year, I want to make a turn. I want to head north. I want to create another story that’s meaningful. One full of heart. One you will love.

The clock is running down. It’s almost halftime. Now’s our chance to flip the script and create something with the little time we have left in the year that we’ll be proud of. -Ken

It’s hard to believe it’s the end of April and a third of the year is already gone. It’s easy to think, what do I have to show for it? Especially when you have a big goal you set out to accomplish for the year. Even more so when you haven’t made much progress towards it. There are always things to blame. Life just got too busy. There’s too much to do, too much going on right now. I’ll get to it later. I still have time. I’ll do it tomorrow.

Sometimes you have to play tricks with yourself in order to make real progress. Because if I’m honest, there’s never a great time to sit down and write a novel. There are a million things we’re responsible for. And endless plans filling up every minute of every day. Not to mention the things we go to which consume our time, like social media and the news which can be all consuming, especially for a political thriller writer. “It’s just research,” I like to tell myself. But at some point you just have to do the work.

Sitting down for hours to work on a big goal isn’t always possible. But you can hack at it. You can cut down some of the brush today. Create the Word document. Come up with a title. Write the first sentence. Come back in an hour and close out the paragraph.

Getting started is the hardest part. But it doesn’t have to be. If you have a goal, and if you’re willing to hack away at it, little by little, you’ll soon find a clear path ahead of you.

A third of the year is gone. But two thirds are left. Let’s do something great with it. -Ken

Happy Easter!

I’ve started outlining the next book in the Blake Jordan series. Just a high-level, general sense of where the characters could go from where they left off in CHAIN OF COMMAND. This part of the process is both exciting and a little scary, if I’m honest. There are always so many directions things could go in and you never know which one is right. But as a writer you have to trust your gut and believe, just like in life, that you’ll end up exactly where you were supposed to be. I’m excited to share more next month.

As a follow up from my last newsletter, audiobooks for the first four Blake Jordan stories are now available on Chirp, Spotify, Apple, and Amazon while the next six books in the series will continue to be recorded this year by the great John Pirhalla. If you’re like me and prefer to read your fiction vs audio, give the beginning of book 1, THE SENATOR, a free listen, and you may change your mind once you hear how John brings the story to life. His many voices and accents, including Morgan’s, are spot on. -Ken

Just a short update this month: my new release, CHAIN OF COMMAND, is now available in paperback! For those who’ve asked, you can pick it up now on Amazon.

Also, the audiobooks are coming along. The first four in the series have been recorded and are up on Chirp right now. They should appear on Amazon/Audible/iTunes sometime in March and I’ll keep you updated as the next six books in the series are recorded by the great John Pirhalla. My goal is to get one recorded a month so all are available this year and the audio for the next Jordan novel I’ll write can release quickly.

March is usually the time where I start to buckle down and really get started on the new Blake Jordan story. I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a limited series with Jami, but will hold off on that for now and will focus on writing Blake Jordan #11 first, and if there’s any time left at the end of the year, I might start on a story to see where it goes. -Ken