Changing Gears

Blog No. 366

The Fall Book Crawl is over, and I’m not sure what to do with myself. That’s a lie. I have a literally endless list of things to do, but no events scheduled anytime soon. It’s about this time (often sooner) that Christian and I sit down and put together a list of events for us to approach and/or plan in the new year. It hasn’t happened yet, however, and I suspect that the delay is down to simple priorities. I was laser focused on the novella, and he is knee deep in his next novel. I’m at a standstill with the novella, though, with the second draft finished and doubt. As Christian goes over Broadcast Wasteland for me (another distraction from his novel) and I finalized the title of the next novella (a little early, but I have to put it in the back of this one) I have the comic as my main focus. Scripts are a tricky thing to write. You’d think that with so much free space and mostly just dialogue to write, it would be way easier. In my experience it isn’t.

Another Week, Another Post

Blog no. 347

It look longer to get her this year than it has so far, but I’m at the point where I’m writing a big piece and not much else is going on. You already know I’m writing the Invasion Novel right now. It’s going okay. Obviously, I’m not giving it as much time and/or effort as I should (I never do). With the day job being what it is (been over that a lot lately) and with both Christian and Elly more busy with family things, I’m having to fit things in when I can and get used to some solo writing again (been three years since that was so common). Other than that, I’m working, still going to boxing once a week, playing D&D on game night (and some odd days as well), playing video games too much (got a pretty fun new one for less than ten bucks) and just, hanging out. I do have some tentative plans for the rest of the summer, but they are just wishful thinking right now. Mostly, I’m just plugging away on the book.

It Begins… Event-a-Palooza 2019

Blog No. 324

I’ve already had a workshop this year (thanks to Vanessa over at Gertrude’s Writing Room) and I’ve even had an interview (also thanks to Vanessa and the good folks at Scribes and Songsters). I’ have yet to have a traditional event such as a convention or reading. All that is about to change—starting this weekend. I’m heading up to Guelph with Christian for GenreCon. I haven’t been to Guelph since a couple of my friends were living there. I went up for St. Patrick’s Day and had a wonderful time. That was years ago now. I have been as close as Kitchener for book related stuff, but this will be a new city for an event. Hopefully it’s going to be a good one.

Monsters, Aliens, Short Stories, & Friends

Blog No. 322

There is a running joke between Christian and me that during the winter months, whenever we plan on going out and doing something writing adjacent (that would be things related to our writing that do not include actually sitting down and writing) we will face the worst weather of the year. Seeing as our workshop was last Saturday, the joke continues. I will say, we were pretty well ready to go by the Saturday morning. We had several meetings dedicated to building the workshop and going over how we would present the information. Still, I thought it would be prudent to have one last review of the material before we headed to Gertrude’s Writing Room to set up. We planned on hitting the Walkerville Anchor, grabbing a coffee, and skimming our material.

All The Things I Have to Do

Blog No. 321

Over the last few weeks, or just over a month or so (time gets muddled with the holidays involved) I was reading over the latest manuscript of a friend and fellow local author. I’m not sure if it was an edit, a beta read, a review, or what. I just read it over, giving my opinion and made a few suggestions, and she seemed to think they were helpful. I hope so, because the book is good and I can’t wait for it to come out now. Also, it was brought to my attention (from a kind and anonymous commenters) that last week’s post had quite a few sloppy errors. I think I caught some of the more egregious typos, but to be honest, I don’t spend much time rereading these posts after I’ve written them. Maybe I should, but I think the nature of the writing is more important. Not to say I am happy with spelling errors or typos. So, thank you mysterious reader.

Year Six Recap (Because I’ve been doing this for Six Years)

Blog No. 320

There is only one blemish on my record (in six years) but I will never let myself live it down. I have posted on this blog every Thursday since 2013, except for April 13th 2013 when I posted on a Saturday. I had a good(ish) reason. I was substitute teaching at the time and I had to go in on the Thursday. Realistically, If I have planned better or used my time more effectively, I still would have been able to get the post out on time, but I didn’t. It stand as the one flub in an otherwise pretty good record. It makes me feel like this achievement (such as it is) has an asterisk next to it. But enough dwelling on the bad. I’ve been doing this for six years. I’m sure I can come up with some good stuff to talk about. Like books and statistics and other oh-so-exciting things! Buckle up, it’s a long one.

Workshops for the Uninitiated

Blog No. 319

It is technically (or more accurately, literally) a new year right now. 2019 is happening, but if you’ve paid any attention, you’ll know my end of the year is the closest post to January 10th, so I’m not quite there yet. That’s a good thing, though. That means that I get to spend this post talking about the Workshop happening on January 19th at Gertrude’s Writing Room. I may also say a little something about how Neon Heart is coming, but really, the only update I have is that I’ve managed to finish the second draft. It was a bit cleaner on the front end then expected (which is terrifying) but the back half was a trash-fire-mess, so I think I had used up all my good writing in the beginning. Third draft will be starting soon, but I’m talking about workshops, here!

The Holidays

Blog No. 317

Last week I was invited to a last minute event at Biblioasis, which was my last event of the year. I wasn’t expecting anything, but they asked me a few days beforehand if I would come to a Holiday Schmoozer with other local authors to be on hand to sign books and what have you. There were some other authors expected and our books were put on a little display table, but the crowd was mostly made up of other authors, too. Not to say that it wasn’t a good time. I just happened to not really be a draw for the store. Some books sold that night, but none of them were mine. I’m not too disappointed. I didn’t have much invested other than time, and I spent my time successfully Schmoozing, so things worked out just fine. I even got one of Biblioasis’ cool Christmas Ghost Stories for taking part. I’m going to call it a win.

December Update

Blog No. 316

Before I started to write today, I too a look at the calendar and realized this will be my third last post for the year. Usually I do some kind of end of the year thing that starts around now and finished with the post closest to January 10th of the following year (since that was the date of the first post since I’ve been doing this weekly almost six years ago). I may keep that for next week, or for the final week of 2018. Not sure. Today, I’m going to talk about other things. I suppose. That doesn’t mean that I know what I’m going to write about. I’ll figure it all out as we go!