Not dead

As much as I’m sure there’s a good number of people out there wishing that I was, I’m not dead. I’ve just been busy. In week five of a twelve week quarter I had my server go down and it rendered me unable to do some school work that was rather crucial to my final grade. I wasn’t able to get the part to fix the server until week nine. So I’ve been pretty swamped trying to catch up on school work in some classes, and trying to stay on top of it in others. Luckily I passed, and since I passed I won’t have my financial aid revoked; which means that I still get to be a college student. Hooray for me.

I turned twenty-three last month, and one of my gifts was a fancy little netbook. It’s easy to carry around, and the keys make these nifty little tapping sounds when I type so I’ve been doing a bit more writing. I took on a few different projects over the last couple of weeks, but with trying to catch up and finals last week I really didn’t put a whole bunch of time into working on them.

I’ve got another album review scheduled to appear in the next issue of Line Zero. It’s going to be on
Gypsy Revival, a band that I met when I was at Indiana Beach last summer. They’re pretty bitchin’ so give them a listen and be sure to check out the next issue of LZ for a review of their EP and a text interview with the band.

I’ve also started writing a new short story for what I’ve started calling the Something and Silver Bullets short stories. It’s the third installment. The second one was never published anywhere due to the fact that I wasn’t really satisfied with it, and it needs a lot of revising. I still haven’t finished the one I’m working on yet. Every time I sit down to finish it I find myself staring down at my keyboard a few hours later with a whole bunch more words and I’m still not done. This is my longest short story yet, I’m pretty satisfied with it so far, and after I’ve sent it out to some beta readers I’ll polish it up and you’ll see it on the blog. Just so you know however, the S&S shorts aren’t really arranged in any particular order. The first two are in chronological order, but I have a feeling that a lot of stuff happened between that last story and this one, so for future reference; the stories don’t have any particular order to them, just whenever I get an idea that I can write into the universe I use it. If I ever write enough of these things for an anthology I’ll figure out what order they all go in, but until then; I’m not going to worry about it.

Aside from that short story and my review for LZ I’m planning on either writing or submitting old shorts to Flagship, and Abattoir. My good buddy and sometimes nemesis Scott Roche Has a hand in Flying Island Press and its imprints so I’m going to try my hand at submitting things there.

Scott also slid me a beta copy of his newest book to read through so I’ll be writing a review for that, and you’ll find it on this blog as well as other places around the neterwebz sometime in mid April.

I’m pretty sure I’ve got everything covered. I just recently set up a profile over at Smashwords. I haven’t filled out any of the information or uploaded any of my work yet, but you can keep checking back and I’ll post up on the blog when something is available there just in case you feel like giving me money.

That’s really all I have to say for now, I hope everybody is having a good week so far and I’ll keep updating about my various irons in the fire.

NaNoWrivalry

Here be the promo I was talking about for the last couple of weeks. Listen to it for all the details, one to post tomorrow as well. And probably the day after that, and the one after that two. Got to get all these things out thank to my nemesis and his delay in getting me the lines.

NaNoWriMo: Week 1 Update

Well, boys and girls, we’ve made it through week one of NaNo. As far as I know we’re all still alive. One of my friends had some trouble with her laptop and lost some work but she didn’t get discouraged. I haven’t hit any walls with writers block, burn out, or procrastination. Surprisingly enough I’m still able to carry on a social life while working on this novel. I guess I underestimated myself and how productive I could be by just writing three or four hours out of the day. My word count after week one is 17,353. I haven’t done any writing over the weekend. I can’t really remember what I spent this weekend doing but I know that most of it was productive in some way or another.

If you haven’t already noticed the word count widgets on the NaNo site started working this week so you can use that to track my progress now. It can be found on the side bar to the right near the bottom of the page. I selected the word count widget for a very good reason. I thought that that reason would have been explained in the form of an audio promo by now, but sadly, my nemesis hasn’t finished putting together the promo yet.

Long story short I find that I have a hard time sticking to writing deadlines unless I have myself motivated. So to make NaNo for this year a little bit more interesting, Scott Roche and I have a little wager going. Whichever out of the two of us have the highest word count by Saturday 10 PM EST each week wins. The winner gets to make the loser do whatever he wants.

You can keep track of all this using the widget in the side bar and audio promos that will be released during the weeks to come. I’ll link the first promo here when it’s released.

That’s all I’ve got to say for now. We’re all in this together, kids. Lets try to keep each other motivated and I hope to see you crossing that 50,000 word finish line with me at midnight on the thirtieth. Hang in there.

Writerly Update: NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo has officially kicked off. For a majority of today I thought that I’d have to postpone my writing. My goals for last month was the creation story for Great Hites, My essay, a few short stories, my novel outline, fixing a neighbors computer, and recording a promo for my show. I accomplished all of those goals except for the creation myth, the promo, and fixing the computer. I didn’t really find a whole lot of time to write the creation myth with all of the other projects that I had going. I have all the lines I need for the promo except for the one line from Kyle, and I would have had my neighbors computer fixed were it not from some hard drive issues.

Now I have a promo for the show to finish this month, I’ll spend tomorrow fixing the computer, and I have something to record for something I’ll discuss near the end of this post.

I made time after dinner for writing. I sat down for about an hour and with the help of techno I cranked out 1,995 words. If you’d like to keep track of my NaNo Progress my page can be found here. At least until the writing widget thingies start working, they you will be able to track my progress in the sidebar to the right. If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo this year I encourage you to add me as a Writing buddy. You might feel the urge to top my word count and that will keep you motivated through the month of November.

What’s keeping me motivated for this year is the rivalry I’ve set up with my nemesis. Keep your eyes posted on my show blog for more information about that in the form of an audio promo.

Also if you’d like to read what I’m working on I’ve added a two chapter excerpt on my profile on the NaNo site.

Another interesting piece of shameless self promotion is that this weeks episode of BOaC. The feature for this week I chose to talk about NaNoWriMo and had Scott sit in on the feature with me and we discussed some domestic things that can get in your way during the month of November. The distractions that the internet poses, as well as some of the issues you face as a novice writer. And after each one of these pitfalls we describe ways to get around them so that you can achieve success this month. It can be found here.

We can do this people, lets keep ourselves and each other motivated. And, Scott, I will destroy you.

Writerly Updates: First Draft Edits

I finished writing my essay a couple of days ago. It’s been given the main title of, “Exploration vs Dehydration”. I sent off the rough draft to Scott Roche, author of the Archangel Novel(s), for first draft edits. I got those edits back today, made all appropriate edits and then sent them off to my cousin for an extra set of eyes on the second draft. Once the edits, if any, come back from my cousin it will be ready for viewing. Upon it’s release it will be available on this blog, it will also be available in .PDF format for those of you who would rather read it that way. And for those of you who would rather listen to it than read it, I’ll have it available in audio form as bonus content on my show blog.

That’s really all that I’ve been working on so far this month, I’ve done a little bit of research for my NaNo project, and I’ve done nothing for research for this month’s GH prompt. And I might delay my work on that for a bit while I work on an interesting short story prompt from News From Poughkeepsie. Work on that should only take a day max, so I’ll be back to researching and writing that GH prompt soon.

I’m not really sure how much more productive I’ll remain due to the fact that my glasses are broken now. It’s true that I have relatively good eyesiight, but spending most of my day in front of a computer screen gives me massive eyestrain. I use reading glasses to combat this. Just recently, however, the earpiece fell off of my reading glasses and I can’t repair them as they’re plastic and one of the parts that held the screw in place snapped off. So if I wish to use my glasses I have ot hold them in place and they sit on my face at an odd angle, making them quite cumbersome to use. Hopefully I can replace them soon before the eyestrain renders me unable to work.

Reading glasses are very expensive but I’ve come across some problems this month that I believe take precedence over the glasses. I need to change the oil in my car, and that hasn’t been done in over a year and it’s starting to concern me now. Also the weather is getting colder here in Indiana and most of my winter clothes from last year either no longer fit me due to weight loss, are no longer in any wearable condition, or have dissapeared. And with my car no longer having a heater I need to acquire materials that will allow me to bundle up.

That’s about as far as writerly updates go, I didn’t really mean to get all personal, and whiny, on you. But sometimes that is what an update entails. And since I try to keep the majority of my personal life from flavoring this blog, I feel that the occasional insight couldn’t hurt.

You can stay tuned to this blog for more updates on my writing progress over the next couple of months, or you could also follow me on Twitter.

That’s really all that I have to say, I’ve been drinking tonight and it’s starting to get to me, and I’m drawing a blank, so I’ll see you next time.