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Writing News and Updates

An Update on This; an Update on That

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Boy, it’s been a while since I wrote a blog post. I haven’t felt the need to post any “life updates”, because Larissa has been doing such a great job of that over on her blog (a far better job than I could hope to do, in fact). She posts all kinds of photos and everything!

On the writing front, my output has obviously decreased significantly since the first half of 2012, so I haven’t had much to update there, either. I’m still putting out a chapter each week for Special People, though I took a break over Christmas, but any SP-related news items that come up get posted on that site, not here. (You should probably follow along over there, by the way. There’s been more progress on the comic project lately, and the current storyline is approaching its finale sequence.) I hope to put a few more interactive opportunities out there for people to get involved with soon, as well.

The Year of Stories is still on indefinite hiatus, and my Lucas Galloway novel is still somewhat in limbo. I don’t have the time or creative energy available to me right now to work on multiple projects at once, so in order for me to return to either of those I think I’m going to have to take a break for Special People, which is perhaps something I’ll do while the comic is posting, whenever that happens to be.

Something I really should get around to doing soon is compiling 50-Word Stories: Volume Three. All of the material exists on the site already, and I have the cover art, etc., so I just need to choose which stories to include, put the cover and some sort of essay together, and release it. I’ve been putting it off far too long, and it’s about time it went on my actual To-Do List. If I haven’t gotten it done by mid-February, someone give my a kick!

Beyond all of these things, life rolls on. I finished Volume 1 of Don Quixote last week, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I want to wait until I’ve read Volume 2 before adding it to my 50 Best Novels list; I’ve heard that the second volume takes on a somewhat different tone than the first, and I think that may affect how highly I rank it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it land in the top 10 eventually, though.

There are plenty more books out there, including several on my shelves, that I’d like to get around to reading, and I’m going to try to share a few thoughts on them as I finish each one, if for no other reason than to make better use of this space, so that it doesn’t sit quite so idle, and also to get my brain and fingers used to more frequent writing again.

P.S. Hockey is back! Hooray!

Writing News and Updates

My Authorial State of Being

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What have I been up to lately? My blog hasn’t been very revealing on that front, so here’s an attempt to shed some light on my current authorial state of being.

You may have noticed that my fiction output has dropped off dramatically over the past couple of months. There are multiple reasons for that. Losing Freight ended, I completed Year Three of Fifty-Word Stories, and I took a break from the Year of Stories to recharge my batteries. Basically, the natural endings of a couple of projects coincided with some creative burnout. Any reasonable person could have seen that coming, probably: writing 12 unique posts per week (averaging over 8,000 words) across four different “franchises”, while also trying to make headway on my novel, was way too much.

I think I can improve on my current output (I’m only working actively on Special People right now), but by the time I’m ready to ramp things up again, some life circumstances may change, and the time I have available for writing may be diminished. So I don’t want to make any promises or predictions about timelines on different projects, but I do want to assure people that I intend to finish off the Year of Stories eventually, and put together Fifty-Word Stories: Volume Three, and do enough rewrites/tweaks to Losing Freight and the early Special People story arcs to make them publishable, and…

Yeah. See my problem?

I’ve also been podcasting every week (and then every other week, except for some recent inconsistencies), but I think it’s time to put that little side project to rest. The effort-to-audience ratio isn’t high enough to justify it right now.

I want to thank everyone for their support and patience while I try to get some of the big items on my to-do list checked off. I hope you’re enjoying the new Special People content I put out twice a week, and as soon as I’m able to start getting more new stories out to you, I intend to do so. Until then, I’ll do my best to keep everyone updated on my progress towards the various releases I’m working on.

Writing News and Updates

Losing Freight Update

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My series Losing Freight has been rolling along. We just hit the end of Week 5, and the action is really heating up!

Losing Freight is really unique because there’s a poll at the end of every page where you can vote on choices that affect the story. It’s been a lot of fun to have people voting along!

New pages of the story go up each weekday at 5 PM PST, and polls remain open until noon PST the next day.

If you haven’t been reading, here’s a bit of a recap of what’s happened so far to get you caught up.

Week 1: We’re introduced to Tic Bolter, owner of a one-man shipping business called Bolter Freightage. In his ship, the Galactic Pelican (name chosen by reader poll), he travels from planet to planet delivering various goods and getting himself in trouble. We also meet Lady Libden, a retired opera singer and one of his clients. We learn that Tic has lost something he was supposed to deliver to Libden, an action figure (as chosen by reader poll).

Week 2: Tic brings on a passenger, Milly Leon, to earn a bit of extra money. It turns out she’s looking for a little more than a ride: she may be trailing some trouble in her wake. But she’s also worth a lot of money, so Tic fires up the Origami Engine (named by reader poll) and makes designs on that cash…

Week 3: Tic gives Milly a “Saucy Wench” to drink (named by reader poll), and Milly explains the “quest” she’s on, searching for her parents, two space-time engineers (as chosen by reader poll) who disappeared many years ago.

Week 4: Tic and Milly arrive on Haddock, where Milly wants to look for her parents. Hoping he doesn’t run in to any of the goons who work for Mr. Dunter, the client who sold the action figure Tic lost during delivery, Tic brings Milly to a pawn shop (where a reader poll sent them). Of course there’s trouble!

Week 5: Tic’s friend Haglyn helps Tic and Milly recover from their ordeal, which in Tic’s case involves drinking some Saucy Wenches, but Milly isn’t ready to sit back and think things over: she heads out to get some good snooping done! She pretends to be one of Mr. Dunter’s secret admirers (a plan voted into action by readers), then runs off once she’s inside Dunter’s building to look for clues. The last thing Tic hears over his PAI (his futuristic smart phone equivalent) is the sound of her getting caught.

What happened to Milly, and what is Tic going to do next? Check in on Monday at 5 PM to get some answers! I hope you read (and vote) along. There’s plenty more excitement to come, and lots more polls to vote in!