The Blog

This year is going to be a busy a hectic one, I can already feel it. In the first month alone, I've started writing my third book, Dream Sanctum, completely remodeled my bedroom, have started to work on the rest of the house, started writing more in general (especially for work), and started making plans to find myself an agent.

Of course there are the negative things to be expected. To put it plainly, I believe I'll be losing some family members relatively soon due to age and disease. Cancer is a beast. In any case, this year is also going to be spent frantically trying to prepare for the inevitable, which is going to be coming much, much sooner than anyone could have anticipated. I'm not looking forward to this.

That said, I think this year might also hold opportunities I haven't been able to experience yet. I aim to really focus on my writing and getting it published, not just doing it the way I have so far. With any luck I'll see a breakthrough that will change the tides this year. So far what I've accomplished, in my mind, means very little. We'll hope for the best.

A short update, but it's about time I get back to work.

Ah, December. Fun month for almost everyone, isn't it? We get to bring gigantic trees into our house without a second glance from anyone, buy a bunch of people gifts and play civil for a day while we pretend to get along with our family, and indulge in about as much fudge, cookies and pie as you can stomach. It's getting close to Christmas, but you knew that already. They've been playing Christmas carols since July it seems. Morons.

Anyway. I've made a tiny redesign to the site to better accomodate the amount of books I've got. Since two are out and more are in the works, it was better to make it all list view so everyone can find what they want without going through a jungle gym of menus. Even though I like jungle gyms. I wish they still had those on our old playgrounds before the Overprotective Parent Brigade got their hands on the system. They're morons too.

So, Petals of Intrigue is finally finished. Unfortunately the cover couldn't be completed because of some strange circumstances, so I made up my own. If it's terrible, you'll know why! But the point is, the book is done, and it's now up and ready for sale on Lulu. It's processing on Amazon and Google Books, since it takes weeks and weeks to get there, but it's done! I'm quite proud of it myself. And of course I have to give mention to my good friend Zen who spent much of her valuable time tediously going through every page of the manuscript many times over to help perfect it and edit it. So much thanks to her, and she's helped make the book look beautiful.

On top of that, I only have a few more people to shop for! Which is a miracle, usually I'm going out up until Christmas Eve, having procrastinated on all my shopping. Ah well. It actually feels good not having to deal with the procrastination crowd. It's so much more of an individual sport.

And finally, I'm starting to make plans to buy a new car. The one I've got is great, but getting up there in years, and recently we've had to replace half its parts, so it's starting to die. I'm looking at either the Corolla or Sentra for now. Sound good? I thought so. My budget is maxing at about $20k, so there's not exactly much I can do. Oh well. By the time I'm ready to buy, something might have changed. We can only hope.

Until next time, yo.

It's not even halfway through the month of November, and I've ended up completing the manuscript for Petals of Intrigue, pretty far ahead of schedule. It's not quite the incredibly long novel I thought it would end up being, but still quite satisfying. Now all that's left is the editing to be done. A great many thanks to all those to have so kindly offered to help or accepted my requests. I appreciate the effort and the help! The cover art is again being done graciously by my good friend Anne Teensma, making my books look good as always.

After that's finally over, I can spend a bit of time preparing the marketing for it, but after that it's back to work! For the most part I've been putting off work this month in order to focus completely on the completion of the novel. Thankfully this one isn't going to take nearly as much editing and tearing apart as Guardians and Dark Beginnings, so it should be out cleaner, sooner, and with fewer revisions. The last book was a pain to reorganize.

At any rate, things are going pretty good. Work-wise, when I have time to actually focus, I can make some pretty good money simply by writing. Thanks to Demand Studios for that, a place I found with the help of a friend that allows me to work from home. It doesn't completely solve my employment issue, but it gives me some pretty nice income, and they're even starting to come out with health care options. If I can write enough, I'll qualify. It will put a dampner on some of my novel writing time, but hey. If I'm not alive, I can't really write, now can I?

Though on that note, I'd like to extend a hip, hip, huzzah for the House of Representatives for passing the health care legislation recently. It's not the final product and there's still some waiting to do, but I'm glad there's something going on around here. About time this country started to catch up to the rest of the world.

So what's next? Well, I'm not going to be doing any more writing before the year is up. I need to get back to work and get some more money in the bank, as that's been deteriorating. There are Christmas gifts to be bought, books to ship across the entire globe, and other random money I need to spend in places I've probably forgotten about already. So with that in mind, my next project is either going to be the sequel to Guardians and Dark Beginnings (which I've already started), or the first in the Dream Sanctum series (which I've also already started planning, but haven't actually gotten started on). I can't decide which. It depends on what people want to read more, though I should probably focus on one series at a time. Then again I've never really cared.

And finally, I'm sorry to say that I'll be saying goodbye to said friend Anne this month as she's off to another state after rooming with me for a few months. It's going to be a sad, sad day, but oh well! It was fun while it lasted.

I keep taking my website down and putting it back again far too often. I think this time I'm going to keep it up for good. I just had to make a few minute changes because the way it was before wasn't working. And I think it looks better this way. Ah well.

Anyway. It's my birthday in a few hours. Why? It's painful. I don't want to be old. We're going out to dinner at some amazing place I always love to go to, presents from people, which is annoying, shame on all of you ahead of time, etc. But I'm twenty. I'm no longer a teenager! Those who once called me friends will shun me! Or something of that sort. That'd be kind of awesome actually.

So yeah, the site's back up, life is moving on, I'm eating chocolate and am in the mood for playing some Age of Empires, yay. Apart from that, I'm now bored, and I should hurry and put this website online before people accuse me of procrastinating. Well, I did procrastinate, so all of you can go eat a sock.