Not Surprisingly

Blog No. 382

This is not going to come as a shock to you now, but it was not quite as obvious last week. The Oshawa event was cancelled. I’m not going to go on an on about how the outbreak of COVID is affecting me. It’s affecting everyone and I’m not that special. Businesses are going to suffer, and people who work in the service industry are in for a hard few weeks. I’m still not sure what’s going on with the day job (as I work in a city run facility and news is coming fast and changing often). For now, I’m safe and as healthy as a person with a chronic illness can be.

I get that this whole experience can be scary for some people, and I also understand that measures have to be taken to keep the virus from spreading, but the extremes of people vilifying anyone who leaves their house and those pushing to keep everything going as normal is as ridiculous as any other extremes. Pop Culture Canada, the group that organized the Oshawa event (and many more in central Ontario) has offered to transfer the registration to an upcoming event. Christian and I decided to try out the Stratford ComiCon on May 17th. It’ll be the second time we’re in the city this year. Hopefully things will be a little more back to normal by then.

Pew, Pew, Pew

Blog No. 378

I’ve been picking away at small things while waiting for people to get back to me with the beta reads for Broadcast Wasteland. I did a layout for Christian’s re-release of The Space Between Houses (it only took me half-a-dozen tries), I wrote a chapter of a new potential project (nothing I’d be willing to talk about any time soon), and I sorted through all the ongoing and on-hold projects that have been kicking around. I even reorganized the file where I keep all my writing stuff on the computer. Basically, mostly busy work. I also have had busy weekends at the day job, but I think I’m going to steer clear of that subject for now. What I want to talk about is playing video games with my brother.

Sort of Limbo

Blog no. 377

Broadcast Wasteland is in the hands of the first group of beta readers and there isn’t much I can do for the book now other than wait for them to finish and try to rope some other poor saps into joining the next round. The layout (being practically identical to Neon Heart) is all but done. The cover image is waiting for the layout to be finished so that I can get the cover template from the printer. The book has to be at least at the printers before I do any sort of social media push (and/or getting the book and info to the usual places), but the content for that is mostly ready. I know I have potentially hundreds of other things I could should be doing both with writing and outside of it, but picking up that torch when I am waiting to be handed several back at any time is worrisome.

Thanks for the Leap Year

Blog No. 376

I blew it. As I write this, it’s February 4th and I still have five chapters to finish for the fourth draft of Broadcast Wasteland. I have exactly two months to have the book in my hand (one of them being a short month) and the next step relies on other people. That’s not a dig on working with others. We have all had terrible group projects in school or work assignments that have required us to deal with terrible partners. In this case, the other people are all trustworthy, reliable, and give valuable feedback. The issue I have is time. I have to get the book to the printer (talk about reliability issues) by mid March at the latest (very, absolute, definite latest) if I have any chance of getting copies for the April 4th launch.

What I Meant to Say, Not a Marathon

Blog No. 375

I’m going to try again. Last week, I meant to write a post about the way I do some of my writing. I had been chatting with a friend about what we were both working on and how we’re handling it. I happened to be racing to finish the third draft of Broadcast Wasteland (now onto the fourth). She mentioned that she found the differences in our approach interesting, and said that I should do a post about it. Then, instead, I pulled an old man rant out of nowhere and the blog was about how I wish I could keep all my communication methods straight. Swing-and-a-miss. Here I am, a week later, to try again, though. I’ll try to keep on topic, but I make no promises.

Daily Life

Blog No. 362

I’ve been working on a second draft of Broadcast Wasteland, but it’s been a pretty slow pace. I’m not overly motivated to work on it every day like I was for the first draft. That’s not to say I haven’t been putting in some time. Right now it’s split between finding a passage to read for the Biblioasis event (which was last night. Sorry if you missed it) doing the second draft, and trying to get that review finished for my friend. That’s not a terrible amount of work, but things at the day job have been hectic and stressful. October was a super busy month (the hall where I work was open every day) and with the new systems in place, we all had to make adjustments to the way we do everything. (It’s all a little slap in the face).

Words of Curse

Blog No. 225

For the last few months I’ve been working primarily on the crime anthology (when I’m not working on Flags and High Fives). It’s been an interesting process, breaking out of my comfort zone. Crime is not something I tend to seek out when I’m looking for a book to read and most crime movies give me the creeps as much as any horror would, but I felt the need to give Science Fiction some space and push myself a little. It’s been an interesting experience and I’m grateful that I can rely Ed Gagnon’s crime expertise if my story strayed too far from the mold. Right now I’m on the third draft and I’m just about to send out the story to some beta readers. Before I do, I have an issue to address.