About TL Jeffcoat

Spending time in Alaska

I am a fictional writer and lover of ancient weapons and cultures. This blog is my journal of things I love the most. My novels are currently unpublished at this time, so if you’re looking, you didn’t miss a link. I write fast paced fantasy adventure with magic and dark themes. I can’t wait for the day I can share them all with the world.

Over the last twenty eight years I jumped in and out of writing. For most of that time I focused on a book I had started in high school. That book was burned, deleted, shredded and trunked multiple times. I loved the story, but I just couldn’t make it work. It was too big, too complex, too long. This book had undergone several name changes and is still something I'm working on, but I'm working on it from a different angle now.

At the end of 2008, I came to realize that I just couldn’t ignore my destiny. I never really cared about being published. I just wanted to write. My mind raced with ideas. Years of dreaming them up and sorting them out in my head was beginning to drive me crazy. I became so restless and frustrated that I felt I had to find an escape. I immersed myself in the online video game world of Azeroth (World of Warcraft). It wasn’t enough of an escape. I enjoyed my vacation, but my muses were still calling me every night. I wanted those voices to go away, but I couldn't write down their stories until I could make sense of them.

Towards the end of winter in early 2011, I was struck by something new. It was a different story than the one that had haunted me for so long, but one that had been rattling around a while. I came up with the idea for Devil Dog years before after hearing about a Navy Seal who had done something bad, but for reasons he felt were justified. From that I began to come up with a new modern day mainstream thriller, and eventually merged it with another voice that had been a family tragedy. Together, these two became my first completed manuscript.

This novel is now gone. It spent a couple years in the editing phase. I could not make it believable enough. I had a couple Marines helping me with the details, but that one key piece, I just could not make it as good as I wanted. I was never a Marine, and I just couldn't get it realistic and Hollywood out of my head.

However, it served its purpose and became the gateway to finally solving my problems with the fantasy novel. Once I started writing Devil Dog, I began to learn so much about how to write a story properly that the walls in my mind that had halted me from really expressing myself suddenly fell away. Now Devil Dog will be rewritten into the fantasy universe, leaving behind the one peace of it I just couldn't grasp. It will be the introduction to a whole new world that I spent the better parts of 2017 and 2018 fleshing out.

The possibilities are now endless and all the voices in my head have become less like gibberish and more like the voices of characters shouting for their story to be told. Then the unthinkable happened, the characters got in a line and agreed to wait their turn. Suddenly, the nonstop chaos in my head ceased. I could finally see everything clearly again. The only voices I hear now are the ones I’m working on. The rest are patiently waiting their chance. The line is long enough that I will probably write till I’m dead.

You want to know who I am. I am a writer. I want to write the story for every voice in my head. Someday, I hope that everyone will know me. I am a big dreamer, and I’ve turned my dreams into my goals. I know now that I am the only one that can stand in my way. Famous or not, I would rather die than stop writing now.

I'm not an artist, but I love to sketch sometimes.

What is up with all the Weapons Weekly? My original plan for this blog was to talk about my writing journey, but I’ve always loved history. My passion for it is pure hobby and by learning about all these ancient cultures and warriors, I really enhance my ability to bring fictional cultures to life. So after a couple months of talking about writing and myself, I got an idea from a book by Kristen Lamb that said to create a purpose beyond your writing for your blog. I thought it was a great idea, and I had the perfect topic. Weapons!

I did not want to get away from talking about myself and writing and stuff, after all this is my journal, right? So, I came up with Weapons Weekly. From a tip from someone on Twitter I decided to follow up each set of weapons with a little culture piece to talk about how the warriors fought, what type of people they were and so on.

Now I'm moving on to new things, embracing the fantasy genre even more. I've started playing table top role playing games regularly and I want to bring my world to that as well. In the meantime, I'll keep writing fantasy.

There you have it, the emergence of this blog and what it is all about, Weapons, Ancient Cultures, Games, and my reading and writing. Welcome, I hope it is informative and entertaining to you. Sorry about my rambling. That is why the Blog used to be titled Mr. Talks Too Much. I do. I could go on for days about anything or nothing.