Hello to all of my readers, my wandering souls, my fellow adventurers, and my tired explorers.
To my current readers, who have stuck with me over the past six years, whether you are from the mainland or overseas, I humbly say – ‘Thank You for your time. I am glad you are here with me in this moment’.
To my new readers, who pop up each and every week, whether you are from the mainland or overseas, I humbly say, ‘Thank you for being here and for, more importantly, sharing your time with me. I am glad you are alive.’
I hope I make this experience interesting for all of you and satisfy your intrigue, because a writer without a reader is one thing and one thing alone – nothing.
And I am pleased to announce that I have TWO new fiction books for sale!
In my earlier years of vernonwrites.com, a journey that started one month prior to 2020, I used to blog free fiction, nonfiction, and poetry at least once a month, if not more.
Because of my dedication to my blog over the past five years, I was able to pull actual posts I had written on my website and compile a book of short stories and a book of poetry. I did not know how much weight my hard work carried until I sat down with the actual books and flipped through the years of stories I had created; and, to be honest, it is awesome to be a writer and already have that special collection underneath my belt.
After constructing my book of short stories and book of poetry, I went through the material on vernonwrites.com and eliminated seventy percent of the posts after consolidating my online word to print.
My future endeavor for vernonwrites.com in 2026 – I plan on blogging a tiny bit next year but not to the extent of where I used to be. My future blogs, that I plan to publish on my website, will have current, real-life, non-fiction themes and have titles like, “I Am Vernon’s Lack of Surprise”, or “I Am Vernon’s Hint of Rage”, or “I am Vernon’s Non-Sympathetic Disdain of Everything That is Stupid.”
I plan on taking a one year hiatus from editing my current fictional novels and conversions to screenplays since 2025 was fully dedicated to that.
During the past five years, I made the decision to dabble in short film production and published two short films and their trailers on my YouTube website : link provided below or You Tube search 3 Castl3s Film.
https://www.youtube.com/@3castl3sfilm
The videos are very amateurish, but I find my appetite satisfied considering everything they contain was self taught – trial and error – one of the best teachers known to man. The film was recorded on an iPhone and edited with basic programming on iMovie. The only microphone I used for the narrated storyline was the internal one that came with my laptop, and, scouts honor – no professionals were harmed in the making of this film, for those of you who are worried about it and lose sleep because of it.
At the time, I recruited Destiny, a fellow coworker, to help me with the female narration. To this day, I humbly bow for her being open to this idea and executing the voice of the female ghost with upmost precision. She did an immaculate job script reading and adding life to a lifeless character, even if that character was a ghost (pun!)
During the year to come, I have an old 9mm videotape containing videos of me and my childhood (and current) best friend lip synching to rock songs from the latter 1990s to early 2000s.
This was before the internet existed like it does today, and some people in the deep country were lucky to have dial up.
This was before Tik Tok and cell phone cameras and filters and 7000Gx internet towers.
This was after Milli Vanilli.
In these videos, our guitars are actual axes (the kind you chop wood with), our microphones are pitchforks and shovels stuck in the ground, our pyro is a raging campfire and a cup full of sawdust thrown in every once in a while; but the memories on this plastic recording device from the past is priceless for me, him, and the massive crowds of zero people we were playing in front of.
If I can get the footage transferred over, we have agreed to share this with the world on my 3 Castl3s Film YouTube channel under one condition and one condition alone – is the world honestly ready to see what life was like before Tik Tok and Snap Face and Insta Chat and and Book Gram and all their cookie cutter reels?
Another side mission, that I willingly threw myself on the tracks for over the past couple of years, was navigating the vocal woes of podcasting. It was something that I was not fully excited to jump into, with no knowledge, because, in all honesty, I found and still currently find no pleasure in listening to most people talk, whoever it is, my own country twang included, but I decided it was worth a shot.
I created a podcast (search ‘vernontalks‘ in the platform of your choosing) using the simple internal microphone on my laptop and stuck with this art form for a couple of seasons, me reading some of my personal fiction while also dedicating other episodes to real-life, common sense conversations.
Here’s the link for my Spotify podcast site and, fair warning, it is quite dusty… … …
https://open.spotify.com/show/6ow7JgY74ttaKGnjZ7Oc5J?si=ef50baa83fc14be7
I have no plans on reigniting this anytime soon.
I appreciate all of you who have tuned in, near, abroad, and overseas, and continue to sneak in for a nibble every now and then, and I only wish I had more time to dedicate myself to this art form. I have a great blueprint on how I would love to continue forward in my podcasting adventure; but I have learned a valuable lesson about myself this past year, and I do not intend on breaking my personal promise I have made to myself – for anyone,
or anything.
This past year, though, I have been hard at work, trying to get TWO of my fiction books ready for independent publishing on my online Amazon.com bookshelf by the beginning of 2026. It has been very tedious, getting all the moving parts aligned while still trying to live life; but it has manifested itself in perfect timing, and I have added some great reading selections to my online portfolio.
Over this span of time, I did question myself in constant retrospect until I finally found my answer – what’s the rush, considering I have already written enough unpublished fiction in the past twenty years to keep me busy for the next ‘however many’ years that remain in my own life?
And I’m beginning to wonder, in hindsight, after all these years, after all the perseverance, if that has been to my advantage and I just did not see it ‘in the moment’.
Most of us tend to get caught up in it, don’t we?
Some of us more often than others, huh?
But I guess we will see.
Life is but an experiment, eh?
Here’s the link to my online Amazon.com Author Page and personal bookshelf. It will help with all the referencing I will be doing in the latter part of this blog post.
For the time being, my books will only be available in paperback form.
https://www.amazon.com/author/vernonherring
Here are my first set of books that I have already published and currently have in reserve in my portfolio. I will briefly share their synopsis’ and why these books are so important to me.
A Story About Her
What is it that connects certain people? Is it love? Is it death? Is it destiny? Or is it a paranormal rift in time that uses those entities to bring about a desired result? If that type of rift opens, its next priority is to close itself, no matter what the consequences turn out to be. This may sound unusual or hard to believe, but it happens more often than one might think.
A Story About Her involves Elvis Sexton and Vincent Wayward, two strangers separated by time and distance. As their lives alternate chapters throughout the book, the reader dives headfirst into the life of Elvis, a teenager who constantly thinks about going over the edge. To keep from doing so, he puts his faith in something that is most sacred to him, a beautiful yet fragile girl named Angel. Coincidentally, Angel lives down the street from Elvis and shares the same birthday as him. Their mere existence was a real-life fairy tale involving two people who were destined to be together forever.
Meanwhile, Vincent has just found out that he has a brain tumor. With another dead end in sight, he slits his wrist while sitting in his bathtub. As Vincent waits for his life to come to an end, an irrational impulse turns into a plan. He quickly bandages the bleeding and fantasizes about one final road trip. Vincent invites his best friend Curtis to join him, buys different kinds of drugs to enjoy along the way, and grows excited about visiting specific national parks across the United States. With this much disarray in his life, Vincent knows there is only one path left for him.
So how do the lives of Elvis and Vincent connect if time and space are working against them?
It comes in the form of a seductive female by the name of Anna Garland.
Anna was one of Elvis’s high school friends who grew uncomfortably distant as the years passed by. The only thing that remained constant was the bitter envy she had over Elvis’s infatuation with Angel.
Coincidentally, Anna is a person of interest on Vincent’s road trip. He methodically conducts his road trip research and sets off in hopes of taking out his pain on this mysterious female stranger.
Elvis and Vince’s rift in time opened on Valentine’s Day 2007 and was going to close as soon as all the loopholes had been exploited. One person’s life had to end so another person’s life could begin. Death had connected them in more ways than one. Love had left the both of them. Destiny was being fulfilled. Elvis and Vince’s parallel defining A Story About Her.
…
A Story About Her was the first book I completed back in 2006. I had to break this novel into three parts because Amazon’s publishing services only allows a 775 page limit in their printing procedures.
The book currently sits at 1634 pages and is an enjoyable journey for a ‘dedicated’ reader. Again, I remit, I remit a thousand times, this fictional novel is for a ‘dedicated’ adventurer only or for one who is patient enough to let a ‘once in a lifetime’ story unfold in its own fashion. There is only one person I currently know who has read the entire book in the span of a week, and this person was an avid reader, and this person was not me.
I have adapted a screenplay for this novel. The screenplay sits at 934 pages, but can be privately edited if called upon to do so.
If any big, small, or independent house publishers or movie companies are interested in this original journey full of real life twists and turns, whether you are in the continental United States or overseas, feel free to reach out to me.
Most things are negotiable in this day and age, right?
(This book is rated R for strong language, adult situations, suicide, violence, and alcohol, drug, and tobacco use.)
Stories from the Void
Where do you want to go right now? Who do you want to see? When do you want to be? How do you want to feel, or not feel, when you get there?
Something tells me you’ve already answered all these questions and a short story has been written about that person, place, thing, idea, or experience.
Whether you want to feel happy, sad, funny, mad, sexy, ugly, or somewhere in between, there is an adventurous connection here for everyone. The genres that each story compasses is wide ranged, filled with twists and turns, nostalgia, real life scenarios,
as well as some that might not be your typcial short story.
Which story will be the one that was destined for you, if not all of them?
The answer might surprise you.
…
This book of short stories was taken directly from the fictional blog posts that I have been posting to my website over the past five years. It was a rollercoaster of a journey in which I learned more about myself as a writer than any teacher could have possibly taught me.
I was led to do this for a reason.
I have no regrets when it comes to this book, even though there were numerous times I wanted to give up along the way.
This book of short stories currently sits at 563 pages and is rated G to R, depending on the actual short story you choose to read.
A table of contents is provided in the book.
And yes, the cover is me standing in the middle of that special stretch of highway at Monument Valley.
Poems from the Void
Poems from the Void is a journey of real life thoughts and abstractly aware observations, presented to the reader as a satisfying, jumbled treasure map full of twists and turns and narrow straightaways. Whether you want to feel happy, sad, funny, mad, confused, philosophical, sexy, ugly, or somewhere in between, there is a poem here for everyone.
Where will you go as you wander a free verse sea of complete sentences, fragments, and run ons in search of one thing and one thing alone – common ground for that ‘ah ha’ moment.
…
This book of poems was taken directly from the blog posts that I have been posting to my website over the past five years. As mentioned earlier in this post, it was a journey in which I learned more about myself as a writer than any teacher could have possibly taught me.
I have no regrets when it comes to this weird book of poetry, even though there were numerous times I wanted to give up along the way.
I realize some people are born poets. Others are chiseled out of stone. I guess I fall somewhere in between. I experimented with traditional styles of poetry in this book, but I tended to lean more toward free verse than any other form.
This book of poetry currently sits at 638 pages and is rated G to R, depending on the actual poem you choose to read.
A table of contents is provided in the book.
And yes, the cover is of me, sitting at what is now a very sacred place for me in the great and beautiful Appalachias.
#priVateEye
#priVateEye is about an extraordinary guy, with an extraordinary gift, searching here and beyond for the love of his life.
After Earth is attacked, Isaac’s twin flame, Katarina, is taken away from him by a mysterious force. The only way she can communicate with him is through memories and dreams because she possesses a special gift as well. Through this connection, he realizes that she was not of this world and tries everything in his power to find her because his love for her is that infinite.
As Isaac brings Katarina back through specific memories and dreams, he starts to piece together the subconscious map she provides and joins the secret Private Eye organization in hopes of finding out answers regarding her disappearance. Little does he know, this journey is going to take him to places he could only dream of, yet, he does this for once reason and one reason alone.
Love.
The only question that remains: how far will one man go to find a love that breaks all laws and boundaries of the Universe?
The answer might surprise you, especially in a day and age when there is more truth in fiction than anywhere else. Some of us just choose to hide it in certain places. There are rules.
And reasons.
…
#priVateEye, my first and last novella, was a unique journey for me.
Many moons ago, I carried the first two seasons of #priVateEye on my personal Instagram account, letting my readers tune in each day to a new episode of what I would like to call a ‘daily updated – free online read’, straight from author to reader. The conclusion to this series came a year later when I decided to finish their story out of posterity, Part 3 going straight to book form and not advertised on any social media accounts.
The reader will crave a Part 4 for this series, but I have made the personal decision to let their story remain as is, for dramatic effect and for the safety of both characters involved.
With this series, I incorporated photography taken by me to help illustrate the book and lead the reader along the way on this emotional journey involving this set of twin flames.
#priVateEye is rated PG-13 and does not have a screenplay accompanying it. Each book nears the 185 page mark. For a slow reader, the entire series can be read in the span of a day. For an experienced reader, the entire series can be read in a couple of hours.
I cannot release anymore information about #priVateEye and its symbolic idea because there are rules when it comes to what is contained inside this specific book.
Also, the #priVateEye organization has forbade me from disclosing any other information.
This past year, I dedicated myself to completing TWO new works of fiction, books in my portfolio that were finished years ago. I did not realize how much this specific task would test me over the past year and, halfway through 2025, I began to realize what I had gotten myself into.
With no way out, I did what all us ‘real’ adventurers do – wake up with the rising sun, even on your days off, and persevere to the mountaintop, no matter how many stops it may take; and to my unknown surprise, everything worked out in perfect timing.
I am over-ecstatic to share these new books with all of you and why they mean the world to me.
The Grange Bed and Breakfast
Deep in the comfort of the rural South, a haunted farmstead stood amongst the dying relics of the past. People from near and far would come and pay steep prices to check in at The Grange Bed and Breakfast. Little do they know, when the sun goes down, the rustic landscape comes to life in a beautiful but deadly manner.
Female journalist Autumn Winters is sent to The Grange Bed and Breakfast to do an expose about the ghostly perils that are rumored to exist there. Major and Lucille McDonald own the bed and breakfast and have seen numerous guests check in, only to disappear or be chased off because the land gave them what they came looking for. Very rarely is there a vacancy at the antique abode, and Autumn feels like her assignment is for a reason.
Other guests reside at The Grange B&B and go out at night to search for their mythical creatures or personal ghosts. Leroy and Jim Bob, two redneck brothers, run the creek banks at night looking for the Headless Man and Lizard Man. Giovanni, a free spirited whino, dresses in her scantiest linens and searches for the infamous Wampus Cat. Shana, a tightly wound prude, roams the misty night looking for a fight with her deceased husband. Peter, a recovering alcoholic divorcee, listens for his deceased son’s voice and tries his best to find him before it’s too late. Denise, a homely girl who was forced to have an abortion, is haunted by the cries of her unborn baby and tries her best to silence them.
Besides writing her expose about The Grange Bed and Breakfast, Autumn’s goal is to connect with her deceased father through a legend he told when he once saw strange lights in the sky. What Autumn has yet to find out is that The Grange brought her there and was going to let her leave when the sacred family land was finished with her and her soul. The sooner, the better, if that could ever be the case for anyone who checked in and was lucky enough to check out at The Grange Bed and Breakfast.
…
The Grange Bed and Breakfast is my first fictional novel in which I incorporated a female lead. Stories and legends from my personal childhood, stories that my father and all his friends would tell us kids back in the day to scare us, are the main themes in this book. The dialogue spoken from the Southern characters in The Grange Bed and Breakfast is written exactly how they would talk and sound, so be ready to throw away your thesaurus and dictionary if you want this molasses covered biscuit to go down easy.
This book currently sits at 768 pages and is rated PG-13 for scary themes, alcohol and tobacco use, and light language. A screenplay has already been adapted for this book and is 570 pages in length. This can be greatly condensed privately, if the moment calls for it.
If any big, small, or independent house publishers or movie companies are interested in this Southern laced extravaganza that only happens once in a lifetime, whether you are in the continental United States or overseas, feel free to reach out to me.
One Day He
Do you talk to yourself? Do you confide in an imaginary friend who isn’t as transparent as they think they are? If you could be granted wishes by listening to your familiar spirit, would you?
Zane finds himself sitting on a park bench, watching everything around him spin into chaos because he has wished for the world to end and his imaginary friend has granted his demand. Out in the darkness of outer space, an asteroid the size of Iowa is hurling toward Earth, the doomsday clock ticking with every passing second.
Zane and his imaginary friend has maintained a steady friendship since his adolescence, both engaging in what some would call wicked endeavors. His friend has swayed him into making good and bad decisions, and nobody running around in the panic of the last days knows the inherent power that Zane possesses. Little does Zane know, there are strings attached.
The only threat to the medieval parasite’s power over its host comes in the form of a sexy college graduate named Ava. Whenever Ava is around, Zane’s imaginary friend ceases to exist, and that is when the true battle rages within his mind. Zane finds himself falling for Ava while confiding in his invisible spirit, him counterbalancing his contradictory emotions with the way he truly wants to feel.
As the asteroid plummets closer to Earth’s atmosphere, the world around Zane begins to melt. He realizes that the only way for his life to end peacefully is to give in to himself and finally let his soul be free. For that to happen, he knows someone must die, if not all the world completely.
…
One Day He is my personal homage to my favorite movie of all time – Fight Club – a movie that this once seventeen year old used to drift off to sleep to each and every night. One Day He was incredibly fun for me to write because the main character is the book’s personal narrator, and I have always admired a true, genuine, gritty, original narration in any type of film, movie, or video game. If executed the right way, personal narration can be very intriguing, especially when something fictional brings out more truth than your current reality does.
But BEWARE : if you read, you will judge.
This book currently sits at 568 pages, the shortest of my books in my current portfolio. This book is rated a solid R due to adult themes, violence, heavy language, sexual situations, tobacco and alcohol use, and mild drug use. A screenplay has already been adapted for this novel and is 409 pages in length (but can be greatly edited in private if called upon to do so).
If any big, small, or independent house publishers or movie companies are interested in this peculiar yet satisfying journey, whether you are in the continental United States or overseas, feel free to reach out to me.
So, guys and gals, You Have to Make Time, right?
But, then again, you may be tired of making extra time all of the time – right?
Are your moving puzzle pieces finally starting to fall into place, one by one, or are all of them still scattered over the table?
Have you looked at the past twenty years of your life and wondered – what was I doing or thinking?
Have you looked at the past twenty years of your life and realized – I did not know it at the time, but my hard work was really paying off back then when I assumed it was a waste of time?
Have you looked at the past twenty years of your life, or whatever time frame you wanted to isolate your personal reflection to, and said – this is not where I want to be, at all.
All I can really tell you is this : if you want to change your life, you are going to have to make time for it, then, stick with it – regardless of regardless.
Your paradigm shift is not going to happen on its own.
So steady your sails, comrades, because some of you are almost at your destination, even if you cannot see it over the horizon.
And, always remember – THE PLANK IS ON THE BOAT FOR A REASON – LET’S HOPE THEY CAN SWIM.
I wish everyone well in the new year of 2026.
If there is something you want to do, do it while you still have time.
If you do not have time, then guess what – you are just going to have to create it out of thin air like the rest of us.
And I promise on everything sacred that your life contains – it, will, be, worth it.
God willing……
If there are any publishers (big, small, or independent) or movie houses (big, small, or independent), near or abroad, looking for fresh and original material from a very chiseled writer – feel free to reach out to me.
I am open to any type of offer.
As long as it does not involve baby oil.
….
Now, let’s roll some dice.
What do you say?
vernonwrites 