My mid-week report to you that covers the three major commitments I’ve made: to write, to edit, and to read.
Believe it or not, I actually started this post yesterday morning, on an actual Wednesday. Life got in the way, though, as it does - albeit in a good way. Read on…
Writing
I’ve missed the last two weeks of updates because of our trip to Tanzania. Not surprisingly, I didn’t get a whole lot of writing done while we were on the trip.
When we got back, I was sick as a dog - not COVID, thankfully. Shari got that (at least, according to the home test) and it wasn’t more than a minor inconvenience for her. Meanwhile, for me, nearly a week later, I’m still dealing with sinus congestion and coughing. Go figure.
The combination of exhaustion from the trip, being sick, and going from sunny Africa to rain & gloom here in southwestern PA made for a pretty harsh adjustment. It was really hard for me to motivate myself to write again. It got to the point where Shari asked, “Do I need to get Cedar to give you a picture?”
Which made me laugh, so of course I mentioned that to Cedar Sanderson, who promptly tossed a picture at me.
Approximately 30 seconds later I was cooking up an urban-fantasy story about a PI who’d been transformed into a cat by a Gypsy curse, his partner the Witch, and a gnome with a sketchy amulet. I’ve got a few thousand words down, and I’m hoping to get “Recall Notice” done for the next Moggie Noir call from Raconteur Press.
Other things in progress: I’ve really got to firm up the outline for Three Rounds of Hell (former working title was “An Understanding”) and get it in for review. I also have two short stories I want to try and complete on a really short notice. We’ll see how that goes, because – well, there’s other things in the works.
Editing
I’ve gotten copy edits back on a couple of short stories recently. I’m fairly confident both are going to end up with a contract, possibly by the end of the year. I’m looking forward to being able to talk about those :)
I’ve also gathered up all the writings I did for N’Inktober, and I’m going to go though and give it an editing pass. My goal is to get that and an introduction to Cedar the first week of December so she can pull it together with her artwork and produce a book of - well, some short stories, some fragments, and some other things. She mocked up a potential cover, and good gravy, I love it. If this all works out, I’ll have a collection of stories just in time for Marscon in January. Not a bad way to start the year!
Stories are starting to trickle in for the Stories in the Key of Tull. The deadline for those is March 1st, so I’m very hopeful that I’ll end up with a good crop of stories to sort through. No promises, but I’ve got at least a couple of well-known authors who’ve expressed an interest in writing something for the anthology. Depending on how things go, and how much I want to hammer myself, there may even be a Kickstarter at some point. I kind of hope I can make that work. I would absolutely love to be able to sweeten the pot for the anthology and offer payments on top of a royalty share.
Then there’s Sigils. I’ve got to admit some trepidation at the idea of moving on to that. Maybe I just need a bit of emotional distance. I’ll get there, though.
Reading
The flight to Tanzania gave me plenty of time to read though Space Cowboys 3 and All Will Burn, plus a couple of non-fiction works.
Let me tell you, both of those books are amazing. Word of advice: if you see anything by Rick Cutler or J. Kenton Pierce, it’s worth reading. The stories those two have been turning out have been real page-turners. Which is not to put down any of the other authors in those volumes! Every story in these anthologies follows Raconteur’s Prime Directive: “Be Entertaining”.
Speaking of reading: if you’re looking for holiday gifts, take a look at the Alpha Mercs home page. We’re a dozen authors strong now – or will be, when I get around to adding Richard Cartwright to the page (welcome, sir!). Among all of us, there’s a good three dozen books or so available. Probably more. It’s hard to keep up, which is definitely a good thing!
Other
The trip to Tanzania was wonderful! Exhausting as well, though that was mostly the result of travel. Thirty-plus hours each way really wears you down.
I’m entering a bit of crunch time at the Day Job. My team does periodic releases, and the next one up is in January. We’d like to have support for a new environment running by then. The problem is that with Black Friday and the weeks leading up to Christmas, we end up in a blackout period where any service updates get blocked without approval. So it’s likely that I’ll have to put in some long hours at the start of the month to help make progress. C’est la vie. I kind of guessed that December would be crunchy, in more ways than one, so I’ll live with it.
I am looking forward to the new year. Over Christmas break, I’m going to work on a schedule for the coming months. I always do better with structured time, so that’ll be a win for me. Especially since I just realized I’ve got Christmas shopping still to do! So right now, out of all the things that I’m immensely grateful for, I think I’ll thank God for living in a world where Amazon and next-day shipping exist!
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Always happy to spark a thought that you can run with!
You never mentioned WHY it was the Wee Heilan Coo Beastie Edition... lol
Glad you are back and perculating!