Updates and more

So most of us are stuck at home “Sheltering in place” during the coronavirus pandemic.  I’m taking the time to get caught up with my writing and all the work that goes along with that.

2019 was a difficult year for me.  I worked my butt off for the majority of the year, working 16 hours days trying to get a promotion, which I didn’t get in the end.  The reality of many writers is that they have to work day jobs to make ends meet.  I’m under no preconceptions that I’m going to break it through to the bigs, or even break through to make enough money to subsist upon without a full time day job.  So I strove for this promotion to try and make life easier for my family.

I learned quite a bit during this time period, but the portion of my life that really suffered was my writing.  I just didn’t have the time, nor the mental capacity to work that much, have a family life, and write at the same time.  I dropped off my Instagram.  I dropped off my Patreon.  I basically didn’t do anything but my day job.

That time period is over.  My life has regained some normalcy (well, pandemic aside).  So I’m trying to put that much effort into research, writing, promotion, and advertising.  I know most of this means nothing to most of you.  This is basically just an apology post for letting life get in the way of priorities, and this is my effort to get back some of the time I’ve lost.  That’s what I’m looking at this quarantine as…extra days added onto my life to regain my writing chops after the 2019 doldrums.

That being said.  Here is an update for the present and future of my writing, as well as updates to this website to make it more user friendly and give more access to my writing.

Anyway.  Here it goes!

Elsie Jones Adventures:

Another fatality of 2019.  My contract has expired with the publisher, which means that I’ve lost my venue for releasing these books.  I’ve also lost my artist.  Where I’m going to be working hard to either get him back, or procure a new artist.  My intention is still to release all 15 of these books.  In fact I’ve retained the rights to the books, so if I have to do full self publishing, I will do it.  There is a very good chance that I will be re-releasing the first three, and will continue to produce the rest afterwards.  Especially since 12 books are written, and the final 3 are outlined.  I would love to see these see the light of day.  I love the stories told in these books.

The Legacy (and Patreon):

My adventure novel (My version of Indiana Jones) which I was serially publishing on Patreon ostensibly came grinding to a halt last August when the whole work thing happened.  Since December I have been back at work on the novel, however I have not posted anything on Patreon since then.  For my patrons, I am going to resume posting Chapters (The first one will be posted on 03/26/2020), without payment attached.  I believe that in the midst of COVID-19 and the many month lapse on my part, you all deserve more of the novel for free.  Not to mention that writing a serial novel is way harder than I anticipated, and will eventually have to go back through and edit earlier chapters for continuity errors that I have created in the last few chapters.  The good news is, I have the rest of the novel organized and plotted out.  It will be a sprint, but my hope is to finish with the first draft by the end of next week (the purposed end of my shelter in place).  The good news with this, is that even if I cant quite complete it within this time frame, I’ll still be able to post bi-weekly Patreon posts until the novel is completed there.  This was also why I’ve waited until now to post them; not starting in December when I began working on the novel again.  I didn’t want to cause any more delay in the pace of release.

The Book of Antiquity

This book has been for a ride.  I started this originally on a rainy day in 2004, and it had a basic idea.  A kid is trying to find a book that can change the world, set in a realistic/fantasy setting.  Think the world of Pan’s Labyrinth.  Over the years is has gone through 3 full iterations (meaning I’ve written this book in total 3 times).  and I’ve never been happy with any of them.  There are moments of brilliance, but they are stuck in a slog of sophomoric writing and ideas.  It has gone from a single novel to a trilogy, to a tetrology.  It has gone from a fantasy to a steampunk to a western.  The main characters have never really changed, but in every iteration I’ve gained more characters.  What I’ve come to realize is that I was trying to shoehorn in too many ideas, and I had such an ambitious plot that the characters were just flat.  This is now going to be a series of books, and Teen books at that.  They will be all of the above themes, but spread out enough to give the characters time to blossom; as well as having many more characters.  The reason for this is, told through the lens I originally had in mind, it was just too restrictive.  Now I can slow down the narrative and make it more emotive.  Now it doesn’t have to be about how it ends, it can be about the journey.  I’ve outlined most of the first book, and I have to say, I am far more excited about this than I ever have been before.  This was always my opus.  My big idea that I always came back to.  Now that I have it in a frame that I like, I cant wait to tell it to you.

All Other Writings:

They are still on the table, but the projects mentioned above are taking precedence.  I’m going to spend my time completing The Legacy and finding a home for Elsie Jones.  Once the Legacy is completed (in draft form), I’ll be diving head first into The Monster in the Woods, which is the first book in The Revolution Cycle.  Otherwise known as the Book of Antiquity.  I will be re-editing all of Elsie Jones and writing them the way I want to write them, and despite the trappings of what 2020 looks like, it’s an exciting time for my work!