Whoah!

So I have not touched my blog since July of 2014. I almost missed posting anything for 2015. Er...

What has happened since my last post? Got me. I didn't read it. I put out a 3rd anthology of shorts called Will Write SciFi for Food III. You know the drill on that. Go buy a copy for your Kindle, Nook, or iPad at whatever eBook site you usually use to help with your reading addiction.

I fiddled a bit on Sherpa Holmes II, but spent more time working on "Cogs: Grease, Dust, Steam, & Magic (An Aeropæia Story)." No end in sight for either story. Well, I have endings in sight, but no end in sight for the writing thereof.

I've made it through yet another year without needing bail. Yay. I've also made it through another year without winning the lottery. Boo. So far I'm still not able to give up my day job in favor of writing. It's part of a vicious cycle. I need to write more to sell more, but I need more time to write, but my day job takes up too much time, so I need to sell more books so I can quit my day job, but to do that I need to write more to sell more... *twitch*

What will 2016 bring? No clue. But I'll keep writing -- even if y'all quit reading, I'll still be writing. Why? Because I have to.

Happy new year and shalom u'vracha!

The Creative Process

So I'm puttering around the kitchen, having just made the missus her lunch. Thoughts of where I'm going with the new book are foremost in my mind as I work on the ramifications of what I did to this world in my prior alternate history novel.

I find some leftover grilled hotdogs and elect to make them into my lunch. I grab two and toss them on the cutting board I just used to make the wife's lunch.

I grab a paper plate and stuff it in the reactor. *beep-beep* 30 seconds cooktime. Start.

Turn around as it starts to count down . . . and grab the hotdogs that are still on the cutting board, sitting on the counter... *sigh*

Warping History

SPOILER ALERT!

If you have not read Sherpa Holmes, do not read this blog post!

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So in Sherpa Holmes, I ripped the western half of the United States from the hands of the budding nation and gave it back to the Indians.

Now I'm firing up my research for Sherpa II. And the Great War, the War to End All Wars, World War One, whatever you wish to call it, is underway.

What have the two to do with each other? One might certainly wonder! Well, after the petroleum rush in Pennsylvania and Ohio petered out, it moved on to Texas, Oklahoma, and California. All three of those regions are now firmly within the boundaries of the Indian Nation. *GASP* What to do, what to do...

Will I have to accelerate petroleum production in the Middle East? Will that move up the timeline of the Balfour Declaration, and as such the Mandate for Palestine? How will the Arabs and Zionists react as I make this happen earlier? Will it affect the Indian Nation at all?

Will Shalik's rule of the Indian Nation, and her part in its creation affect India? Will they throw off the British rule and declare their own independency at an earlier date due to her success in the Americas?

*sigh* I tossed a pebble into the time-stream in Sherpa Holmes. Now I have to deal with the widening ripples of that effect. Oh, bother.

New book!

Everyone likes FREE stuff, right? Sure we do. Free is wicked awesome! So skip on down to Smashwords and get a FREE copy of my new SIXTH book, Things that Go Bump in the Night.

Yon 'fore the now, the then was a'here.
The beasties, an' ghoulies, an' ghosties ran freer.
Amok an' away, we hid from the day.
Runnin' at night, we doled out our fright.
Twas not of our own strife; we were spoken to life.
I be one o' the beasties what goes bump in the night!

Are our nightmares things of fantasy and imagination? Or does that which we dream of become real? What happens to a small girl when her nightmares do become real?

A short single.

Sure is dusty in here!

Oh yeah. I have a blog. Well, I don't call it my MUCH NEGLECTED blog for naught. It has been since September of 2013 since I took this thing out and fiddled with it.

Since then I have finished and published my first full length novel, Sherpa Holmes. To date she has earned 3 reviews, all 5 stars. Quoting the most recent, she wrote: One of those books where you are sorry that it ends...

And if you're waiting for an excuse to get your own Kindle copy, it will be on sale for only 99 cents starting April 16, 2014!

I've been working on what thus far is a short story called Things that Go Bump in the Night. My wife told me I needed to quit with the short stories, since they don't make me any money. Well, this one definitely won't, since I am planning on releasing it as a free single when it publishes.

Why? she wanted to know. Well, I spent almost 3 years researching, writing, and rewriting Sherpa Holmes. I was steeped in the language, history, and heritage of the Wild West, as well as that of the Navajo Indians (along with several other tribes) during that entire time. I had my characters with me at all times, even to the point of having conversations with them as I sat in my truck. (My coworkers still think I'm nuts.) (No, belay that. They're positive I'm nuts.)

So when it came time to move on to the next novel, I was still enmeshed in Sherpa's time frame and region. My cultures that I was now writing about kept sounding the same as those in Sherpa's time. So I needed something to cleanse my mental palate, as it were. Thus, Things became my mental cracker.

Where do I go from here? Finish Things, trot her off to my Alpha readers, then rewrite, back to the Alphas, rewrite again, then off to my editors. Will I begin to work on something else within that time frame? I hope so. Sherpa Holmes was fun, and I have begun to flesh out Sherpa II, but it is time to play with some different characters. I may even go with a totally different genre. I've been working in the fantasy genre for so long, I believe it's time to go with some military scifi.

Who knows? It all boils down to, "What if?"

Write something!

It's Saturday. Got a turkey breast roasting in the oven; the dogs are fed; the kitchen sink is clogged and refuses to unclog; I'm out of clog removing chemicals; it's National Drink Beer day; and I need to write.

I still have the urge to pull out Sherpa Holmes and work on that novel. But I cannot. I have only a few more days until the deadline for my alpha readers arrives, and I need to just leave that manuscript alone until they are done.

But Sherpa has been my life for the past 2.5 years now. That is what I worked on, day in and day out, hour after hour. Putting it away and moving on to something else has been difficult. Nay, impossible!

I've not written much of anything since I sent it off to my readers. I popped off that quick short story, and that's about it. I did open up my next novel, Cogs, and read what I had written up to now. At some point I fixed the beginning of it. Oy vey! What have I done? I ruined the opening. So I suppose I will have to go rip that apart and start over.

Well, there's a plan. *rolls up sleeves* Cover me. I'm going in...

*blowing off the dust*

Has it really been almost a year since I posted on this pathetic excuse for a blog? Wow. Well, in my own defense, I was working hard on getting the first draft of my novel Sherpa Holmes finished. And it is. So is the first rewrite. It's now in the hands of my alpha readers. Yet, I'm still itching to work on it. I find myself opening the file up at least 3 times per week to tweak it. NOTE: That was TWEAK, not twerk. But I need to give my readers time to finish reading and commenting on it. That will happen on the last day of September . . . 2013, not 2012.

Like all writers I am suffering from a need to write. I crave working on my novel. I want to finish it and get it into the hands of my readers. But . . .

So what now? I did snap off a quick short story and stuffed it in a folder as the lead story for Will Write SciFi For Food, Three. Wrote that in a lazy Sunday afternoon. Short stories have always been a breeze for me. (See Toys in the Attic.)

I have many ideas rattling around upstairs with my imaginary friends. I just need to grab a few and get them down on a page before I lose them. But which one to start with?

Who knows?

And who knows when I'll write another post on this. The mind boggles!