First Status Update of 2016

Pretty concise title, right? What can I say, I'm saving the creativity for the work.

The Perception of Reality has now passed the fifty percent mark. It's on track to have the first draft complete by the end of the month. This one is up and down for me. Sometimes I think it's running short, other times I think it's running long. I guess the only way I'll know for sure is to look back once it's finished, right?

On the editing front, I finally finished the second draft of One Last Dance. Next I'll be tackling a third draft on Demon at the Window, then it goes into the trunk to await submission or release time. After that, I'll tackle Blood Games so I can get it and PoR out to the beta readers.

So far, Hidden Hearts is receiving decidedly positive feedback from the beta readers who are done with it. My wife actually blew through it in less than a week, which for her is lightning fast to read a book. It's officially her favorite of everything I've written, so it will be the next submission once I do another draft of it. Not sure where yet, but I'll keep you posted.

On the submissions front, I did hear back from the publisher about Consequences - well, sort of. The sixteen week waiting period came and went, and nothing. I emailed for a status report and was informed that due to some staffing changes, they were backlogged. I already knew about the staff changes, and expected this, so I agreed to the additional four weeks they asked me to give them. Hopefully the old adage about good things coming to those who wait proves true there.

I did submit the full manuscript of The Journal of Jeremy Todd back around Christmas, so I'm pretty sure I've still got some time to wait before getting a decision on that one yet. Keeping my fingers crossed, though.

And that's where I'm at! I'll keep you all in the loop as more things develop.

Until next time!

Ramblin'

This one is something different for me, not simply an update on where I'm at with the writing, but a full-scale catch up on me and the things I've posted about on this blog before. In other words, a whole bunch'a ramblin' just because I felt like doing a post.

First, the writing. As you can see from the progress meter, Blood Games is officially done with the first draft. The Cochran books are now an official trilogy. That won't last long, because book four is on the horizon once I finish the current project, but it's still an accomplishment, right? I am now working my way through the first draft of Hidden Heart, the haunted house story I had in mind. This one is pretty tough, but in a good way. I think. See, it was always meant to be subtle. Sometimes I have a hard time with that. I'm eight chapters in now, and honestly not a lot has happened. Some things have, enough that the reader will realize there's more to the house in question than the current owner does anyway, but the poo hasn't hit the rotating blades yet, to modify a phrase. Soon, I think, since we're closing in on the end of the first act and the start of the second, but not yet. Hopefully everyone will like it once it's finished, as it's a complete change of pace for me. I guess we'll see.

I've been sick the last couple of days, so I didn't get much done on the editing front, hence no change to the progress meter for it. I tinkered with both One Last Dance and Homecoming, but not enough to amount to anything. Hopefully I'm over whatever bug this is in the next couple of days so I can get caught up there.

Still no response on either of the two submissions I have out there. I did reach out to a friend on Facebook who's going to school for graphic design about a cover for Consequences should it come to that, but I'm still holding out hope for a good response from one or the other.

Let's see, what else is going on...

I guess the biggest news is that I'm trying to quit smoking again. I went to vaping, since my primary motivation was a desire to keep my chest from hurting so bad whenever I woke up every morning. So far, so good. I've been doing it for about three weeks now, and I've reached the point where regular cigarettes taste like crap. Three days now, and I've only gotten my nicotine fix through vaping. I also managed to drop from the 18mg of nicotine that I started on to 12mg currently. Hopefully I'll be able to drop that again soon to 6mg. I don't know that I'll drop all the way to 0, but it's been a huge improvement so far. I can actually breathe now, and that's really what I was hoping for all along.

On the geeekdom front, I finally got to watch Jessica Jones on Netflix, and I have to say I'm impressed. I'm not as stoked for a Luke Cage series now since I kinda got my fix for him with this one, but at the same time Marvel is doing well with their mature-themed series. The little nods to the MCU make it even better. If only DC could catch a clue with Arrow, Flash, and the upcoming Legends of Tomorrow. But I've already made that point, so I'll move on.

On the DC front, Arrow and Flash are both turning out strong seasons, with Flash easily getting over the sophomore slump and Arrow taking things in a new direction with Green Arrow and the addition of mysticism to the universe. Have to say, so far the highlight was seeing John Constantine show up in Arrow using the same actor from the cancelled Constantine. Love the actor in that role, now someone needs to pick the series back up and do it justice.

I caught the first episode of Supergirl, and while it wasn't what I expected, it was far from being bad. Still, a superhero show nowadays needs to do more than just "cute" to work, at least for me.

I wasn't too sure about this season of Doctor Who, but they finally won me over. The two-part episodes felt like a throwback to the classic series where it might take six episodes to tell one story. On the whole, it's been a strong season, with only one or two episodes that made me feel "meh" about the whole thing. We got Osgood back, and in a way that made sense, and Capaldi has proven beyond any doubt that he IS the Doctor. His speech at the end of Face the Raven actually sent chills down my back. And last week's strange, mindbender of an episode was the perfect intermission between the events of Face the Raven and the potentially massive season finale coming up this Saturday.

Ash vs. Evil Dead. What can I say? It's Bruce Campbell as Ash, it's got the Necronomicon, deadites, blood, gore, and cheese. It's thirty minutes of heaven every episode.

The last trailer for The Force Awakens actually got me interested. I still wish they hadn't canned the entire EU (although there's truthfully not a lot I'll miss from it), but I'm willing to give it a chance, and I'm going to be standing in line in a couple weeks waiting to see if it lives up to the considerable hype.

The Avengers 2.5... I mean the Captain America: Civil War trailer was incredible as well. I can't wait to see how this plays out, but they've got me involved either way. "I have to do this," Cap says. "He's my friend." "Yeah, so was I." Tony replied, his voice sad. Chills.

That pretty well sums me up for the moment. Once Doctor Who is done (including the Christmas special - can't leave out River) I'll do an overall season review on here. We'll see if I'm excited enough about Star Wars to do the same for it. Otherwise, I'll keep everyone updated on the writing progress and attempts at publication as the news comes in.

See you next time!

A Quick Progress Update

Hopefully I can do this one without rambling too much. Just a quick little note about how everything's going.

The third Cochran Investigations book, Blood Games, is on track to have the first draft finished by Thanksgiving at the latest. It's looking like it'll be the shortest of them so far, but it still might surprise me. I've wrapped up most of the subplots aside from the final acts on them, and am well into act three on the main plot, so hopefully this one is racing toward the finish line.

Once that one's done, I'll be starting on another standalone. This time it's a haunted house tale I'm really looking forward to digging into. The initial working title is Hidden Heart, and if it plays out like I expect it to, it will be less blood and more subtle creep factor. At least that's the intent. I suppose I'll know for sure once that first draft is done.

The second draft on The Journal of Jeremy Todd is finished, and if I get a full manuscript request I'll just have to format it and send it out. I personally can't believe I finished this draft this fast, and I swear I hope to never have to try that again. My brain was hurting by the time it was done.

Since that's finished, I'll go back to the edits on One Last Dance to try and get the second draft of that one done as well.

OLD and Journal are both in the hands of beta readers now, along with Demon at the Window, so I'll be waiting on feedback there before I start on any further drafts of those.

Since I need to take a break before starting the edits on Blood Games, I'll use my normal editing time to try and get Homecoming finished up.

On the submission and potential publication fronts, since the open submission period for Sinister Grin runs until the end of the month, I'm not expecting to hear back from them about Journal until sometime after that. They didn't give a lead time on their guidelines page, but I'm figuring up to six weeks there. Consequences is now past the halfway point in the waiting period on it (December 9 will be 12 weeks, and I could have to wait up to 16), so I'm not out of the running yet. I know the publisher was going through some editorial staff changes in regard to their horror line, so I don't know if that will affect anything or not. I've seen nothing on their site to indicate it, so I have to assume the original wait time remains in effect until I hear differently.

And that's it, you're all caught up! I'll update again once I finish Blood Games, or if I get a publisher response I can talk about, whichever comes first!

And Another One Down

I just typed the final words on the first draft of One Last Dance. It weighs in at just over 89,000 words, and 290 pages in MS Word format. It also now holds the distinction as the fastest first draft I have ever completed. Makes me think I actually should try the whole thing where you're supposed to do a novel in a month for a competition thing.

This is kind of a strange one, as I'm not sure how people are going to react to it. The subject matter is a little, I don't know, different from what I've done before. It's still a horror novel, but there are some subplots that actually get pretty emotional instead of scary. There's much less gore than Consequences or even DatW, so we'll see. I guess from here it'll be up to the beta readers to decide how far off course it is.

Here's what's next. Demon at the Window is almost to the completion mark on its second draft, then it goes out to the beta readers. This one, strangely, is more in demand than either of the other two I've done, so I suppose it will follow relatively soon. Once it's formatted, off to the beta readers it goes.

Which will be strange for me. I'll have two books in the hands of beta readers at the same time. Some will be the same, but there will be some new ones reading OLD that have not read DatW yet. While it's a bit unnerving for me to consider, it makes sense. I want the Cochran books to be a series, yet still accessible no matter which point you jump on board. By having people read this one before reading its predecessor, I can gauge how well I'm hitting that mark.

If you're waiting on it, give me a couple weeks to get it ready to go out. If you're not a beta reader and you're waiting on it, you'll have longer to wait. At least three more drafts and two other books to come out first.

Up next for me will be making the Cochran books a trilogy. The next one is tentatively titled Blood Games, and will resurrect the original case that came to mind when I first met the character years ago. I'm not sure exactly when I'll be starting on it, since I still have the prewriting phase to go on it (research, notes, etc.), and I do want to get back to Justicar at some point.

What I do know is that since I didn't take any during this one, I will take a couple of days off to let the old gray Duracell recharge. My "To Read" and "To Watch" lists are growing longer every day, and with precious little time for such things (since I devote most of my free time to actually seeing my family or working on my writing), I should take the opportunity to shrink them back down to manageable size. Who knows, maybe I can actually post a couple more blogs of reviews in the next couple of days.

Just don't hold your breath. Knowing myself as I do, I'll be writing again before I intended to. Ah well, I can sleep when I'm dead.

Getting Back on Track

So the crazy stretch at my day slave job is finally reaching its end. What that means is that I will finally be able to get back into the routine I had been using to get my work in this, the fun job, done. To that end, here's a few progress updates, all thrown into one big soup.

Consequences: Not much to report here, I'm still waiting. Yesterday was the one week mark since submission, so the concept that I would have heard anything by now, one way or the other, is just wishful thinking. That's okay, though. See below for what I'm using to try and keep my mind off it.

Demon at the Window: If you remember from a previous post, my normal routine for editing was that the bulk of it was completed on Mondays. Well, since my day job killed that for a couple of weeks, I still have yet to officially begin the edits that will make the second draft of DatW. Now that I get them back, I can get going on this full steam. I'm setting a tentative target of Halloween to have the second draft finished. That may change, especially since I'm not in as much of a hurry since Consequences needs to do its thing before I consider anything more concrete for the timeline on DatW, but at least it's better than what I had (which was nothing, in case you were wondering).

Justicar: I'm starting to get a general idea of what the next scene for the story is, so I will probably get back to this one in a couple of days or maybe a week. Right now it's still gestating, so my main focus is elsewhere, but fret not! This one is not forgotten, just taking a nap.

One Last Dance: If you haven't figured it out by now, this is the next Cochran book. I've got the concept firmly in mind and have been churning away with it for almost a week now. The majority of the cast of characters have been introduced, and it's time to start plugging away at Jack's actual investigation . This is the stage where thought has to come into it, so I don't reveal too much too soon, so it may rest a bit so I can get back to Justicar while the pieces fall into place. And if by looking at the progress meter you have the idea that I'm further along in this one, keep in mind that as a fantasy story, Justicar is projected to be much longer than OLD, so the percentages will be skewed accordingly.

And that pretty well catches me up. I still have some time left on my indentured servitude for the day job, so I need to get to sleep. I will try and do a couple of other posts in the next week or so that have been rolling around in my head, some things that are either not related to writing at all or only loosely so.

Until then, sweet dreams!