It's been a challenging first few months of the year! All kinds of computer issues hit in January, with all kinds of things suddenly declaring themselves too-old-to-function. And my oldest programs are not even three years old! So, I've been slowly getting everything back in working order. My computer had to spend some time in the hospital. I still have an Internet connectivity issue, but it's not as bad as it was. One more repair, and everything should be back on track.

Speaking of getting back on track, the "Release Schedule" returned to my Web site today, updated through July. More may be added to this list as things develop. So keep your eyes peeled for new announcements. :) Right now, it just relflects the Kindle conversion/paperback re-release schedule, but does not include projects like The Great Debate, which is coming back out as well, as soon as we get the distributor issues worked out. Should only be a matter of weeks now, though I am reminded of my pet name for the project back when I was first trying to get it out, "The Great Delay." lol

And speaking of The Great Debate, iUniverse has released the first edition for the Kindle. I was not involved in that. They didn't even tell me it had happened, so I'm not sure exactly when it did. The irony of this particular development is that the event that led me down the road that has culminated in taking control of all of my publications and re-releasing them for Kindle and in other formats through Clark Ink, LLC was that I went to iUniverse with the idea of releasing an e-book of The Great Debate, and they told me no. They said it wasn't possible, not unless I wanted to help finance an entire second edition, because they "no longer had the files" to work from. First of all, I knew that I was either dealing with incompitent people or being lied to outright, because the book was still in print, and print-on-demand, which meant that they must have had access to the files, otherwise how would they have been able to print it? Second, if a second edition was going to be forced on me, I was going to do it my way, since I'd always wanted to do a second edition of that particular book anyway. I decided it was time to cut out the middle man as much as I possibly could. Then...frustration! The e-book market had exploded while I'd been turned away, the formats had changed, PDFs were no longer the way to go! I researched, learned, dreamed a conversation with Benjamin Franklin that finally led me to embrace the new format wholeheartedly, and thus began the process of converting everything I'd ever written into updated e-book formats! Now that I'm at the tail end of finalizing the release details for the book that started this whole thing by the very "impossibility" of iUniverse putting out an e-book of the existing edition...they've done just that; they release a Kindle e-book of the existig edition, to which they allegedly no longer had any usable files. Good for them; better for me, to have left them behind. I'm looking forward to anouncing the release of the second edition of The Great Debate. Right now, were just trying to get the price where we want it. :)

Relating to the updated "Release Schedule," several older e-books that had been "un-linked" from the official site due to their converted editions supposedly coming out soon have been "re-linked," until we have a better idea when they'll be converted on the new schedule. Otherwise, these titles may have been missing for several more months! These stories are "Music of the Metrognomes," "Metrognomes: Worse than a Gremlin," and "The Escapist," and I believe they are even still free to download until they are removed again when their Kindle conversions are officially announced. The link to "Haikus Are Stupid" has also been restored until the collected hardback finds its way back onto the official release schedule. Enjoy! :D

I've been sick and a bit low energy. Something's been going around since the weekend I spent at Bridgeport with the youth. I've been fighting it off, refusing to succumb. My mother has it to an extreme. I've really just had to deal with a scratchy throat, very mild cough, and bouts of laryngitis. This, combined with exhaustion from not having had any down time since the weekend at Bridgeport (which was wonderful), has led to a fairly unproductive week of writing. Last night, therefore, I made the conscious decision to do nothing on Monday, which I have now accomplished quite tremendously. I needed a day of down time, and I knew it. I feel much better as a result. :) I just sort of lounged around and continued my reading of Anne Rice's The Wolf Gift. It's hard to put down! In fact, I have to force myself to do so each time. I'm relieved at how different her take on werewolves is from mine, and excited by her own original spin on the mythology. Her werewolf reminds me, to a degree, of the Spectre (my favorite comic book character ever). He's sort of a bloodthirsty, avenging hero. I can tell how much fun she had writing this, and that makes it so much fun to read. :) I'll get back to writing tomorrow, feeling refreshed. The sickness has almost completely left me at this point, and I'm feeling very refreshed after my day of peaceful respite. Now, back to the couch and that very good book!

I mostly wrote in my head today; a legitimate part of the process for me. I came up with a lot of good stuff for The Legends of Nod #2. Sat down a few minutes ago and wrote the next scene, picking up where I'd left off on the manuscript months ago; finished out the fourth bullet point on the eighteen-bullet point outline, so, fourteen to go! From today's head-writing, I know that there are a couple more characters not in the outline who will have parts to play in this episode. There's also a non-outlined epilogue that came to me some time back.

I did a lot of visioning for the entire series today as well. It's coming into focus in a very dynamic way. I have all these stories that I want to tell, and I'd originally thought to just tell them in an unending fashion. I know certain events that will change the series as I go, but there was no rush, really. I had planned to hit the more dramatic points as my whims demanded. Now, I'm seeing the series as much tighter, much more focused. I have a specific number in mind, and I intend to go through my notes and narrow the events into this number, spacing them out accordingly. This will keep things moving and much more exciting. Once I get to the number of episodes I am planning to write, I will decide whether I want to continue the series as is or move in a new direction.

The Legends of Nod is really the back story, you see. I had a dream, years ago, and I wanted to write it and publish it. But the story, as it was, wouldn't have any significance for readers without first showing you the history of this world in my dream, because the story in the dream was about that. It was about...well, I don't want to give it all away. Suffice it to say, I have always intended, eventually, to take The Legends of Nod forward to this dream, and that is where the story, for me, will end (unless the characters say otherwise). Meanwhile, it's a lot of fun building the world that existed in that dream, one adventure at a time.

I finished writing "Scarecrow" some time after midnight, technically Friday. I haven't written anything since, except for an extremely weird thing I wrote at camp for the youth over the weekend...but we won't talk about that right now. lol

I pulled out the outline for The Legends of Nod #2 and looked over it. I spent a day getting myself out of a horror-writing mindset and into a fantasy-writing mindset yesterday. Today was largely a church work day, so there wasn't really any time to write, except for right now, and it's nearly midnight! Tomorrow I hope to get back into Nod. The first episode of the series is continuing to perform verywell on the Kindle! I'm so thrilled by this development! :D

Meanwhile, I'm still reading Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II. I'm a little over half way through. I haven't given much time to reading lately, and I fully intend to remedy that.

As for "Scarecrow," I heard back from my editor Friday evening, and to my delight, she loved it! She definitely saw it as "Glenn Unchained." She said it reminded her of some of my early horror work, but a lot funnier. I'll keep you posted on when and how this new story will be making its way to the public as things develop! :D For now, I'm off to read.

I wrote absolutely nothing today! There simply wasn't time, once I got my energy up. I had one of those sleeps last night where I must have been sleep walking or something of the like. I felt as though I hadn't slept all night, even though I clearly had.

I did finish watching that Cities of the Underworld DVD. There were three episodes. Last night, I watched a silly, sensationalized episode about the Freemasons. I won't go into my thoughts on this, but I will say the tunnel system in Boston fascinates me. I hadn't known anything about it before. Today, I watched an episode about Vlad Dracul, which was a lot of fun. Also a bit sensationalized, but with Vlad Dracul there really isn't any need to sensationalize things. Most of it was pretty informative. Then, at long last, I got to the episode about the underground cities in Capadocia, where sits the underground city of Derinkuyu. While I did learn a lot, I still feel there is so much more to be revealed about this city. They didn't use the name Derinkuyu, but there are apparently a lot of underground cities in the area. They focused mostly on the defenses of the city, which were impressive. I will definitely take some design tips from this information into the caverns of my gnomes. They also showed some religious centers that were simply breathtaking. Still, I want much, much more. I want maps. I want an explanation of how the plumbing worked. I want to see more of the artistry of the city itself up close. I would love to find a detailed book, or to go there myself with an expert who could guide me through the tunnels and answer all of my questions directly. I will continue to investigate this city as far as I can. My sister has mentioned a book that is out there somewhere, though not in her library, about Turkey, which may cover more of the secrets of Derinkuyu. I will try to track it down.

Meanwhile, I hope to finish "Scarecrow" tomorrow. It's going to be a busy day, and an even busier weekend. If I don't have time tomorrow, it will be Monday before I can get back to the story. We may also have come to a temporary solution for some of those "business" issues with the publication of my work. I'll know how things are going to go by tomorrow, but it may be next week before anything really starts moving again. Then, the second edition of The Great Debate should be released in hardback and e-book almost right away. I can hardly wait! :D

I wrote about nine manuscript pages of "Scarecrow" today. The story has officially graduated to "novelette" status. I hope to have it finished by tomorrow. I am very ear the end and having a great time! A character showed up in my writing today that I hadn't expected to. This story is proving itself to be very connected to some of my other work. I just got back from Barnes & Noble, where I bought the new Anne Rice novel, The Wolf Gift. I'm very much looking forward to reading it, but I doubt I'll get to it until next week. Anne Rice is one of my favorites, ever since I first discovered her at nineteen. Before I get to this new book though, I need to finish reading Sean Williams' Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II. I'm trying to get caught up on Star Wars, but it's so hard when so many novels come out in a year, and I can only read them one at a time, with other things in between to keep me from getting burnt out. I've been reading a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs lately. I discovered his work last year, and I haven't been able to stop myself from reading more and more now that I have a Kindle and the public domain books are free. I've downloaded Warlord of Mars for my next adventure with Burroughs, but I am still reading books one at a time. I never tire of reading.

Now I'm off to watch a DVD my sister sent me on Netflix. She's a librarian, so I asked for her help in finding research materials on the underground city of Derinkuyu. I really want to explore this city for my next Metrognomes novel. All I've got about their underground cities has been entirely created in my mind. I had no idea there were actual cities like Derinkuyu, capable of housing thousands of people, with indoor plumbing to boot! When I stumbled upon a mention of Derinkyu, I had to know more! I want to know how it worked, how it was laid out. Such knowledge could only improve my vision for Metrognomes and how I present it. I already know the general layout of the tribal caverns, but seeing how Derinkuyu worked will surely help me flesh out the mechanics. This DVD is part of a TV series called Cities of the Underworld. This is season 1, disk 3. If I find it useful, I may check out the entire series at some point. Who knew there were so many underground cities that an entire multi-season TV series could be produced to document them! Our world is such a wonder!

Well, I haven't written anything today. Not yet. I am so sporadic in my daily schedule. Usually, I like to get up, check in on the computer, have my shower, make some decaf coffee, then write for an hour before going to the office, or write for several hours if I don't go into the office at all, then do something recreational, go see a friend, watch a movie, something like that for the rest of the day. That's my ideal. It is almost always interrupted, but that is my ideal, and when it works, it works very well.

Other days, I write in my head. I work a scene, or an entire story, or a character over and over in my head, so that the next time I sit down to write, I'm really just copying down what I'd already written mentally. I usually wind up writing at night on days like this, and then getting too tired to write very much at all. Sometimes I'm already tired, and I go to bed, putting off the physical act of writing until the next day, or even later. I hate it when I do that. I prefer to write my thoughts when I have them, when I'm still so perfectly sync with them. Waiting a day makes finding that rythm again so challenging.

Then there's what I call binge writing. I seldom do it, but when I do it I'm like a man possessed. I may do nothing all day long, like today, almost as if I'm charging my batteries. Then I write, always after dark, after the world seems to be sleeping all around me. I write until dawn, and I don't stop until I collapse, or I am interrupted by the demands of the world and my commitment to be a part of it. I have even done binge writing several nights in a row at times, especially when I'm working on a novel, rather than a work of short fiction. I simply must go on and get to a certain point, then the next, and the next, until my eyes blur and I can't write at all. It's always difficult at the office on mornings after a session of binge writing. I usually forget appointments, suffer through phone conferences and staff meetings, wade through the day like a man in the shallows of an ocean, slowly, deliberately, feeling the pull of the tide, yearning to walk onto the beach and collapse on the sand.

Some writers have a routine. My routine, it seems, is the very lack of any routine. I go through cycles. In fact, I feel I may binge write tonight. That, or I won't write anything at all. I would hate to wreck my sleep for even a day this week. I have a retreat that I'm helping to lead this weekend for youth from all over the North Texas Conference, and I want to be fresh. I want to be rested. A night of binge writing is difficult to recover from, but I have always been happy with the results. I leave it to my whims to determine what I shall do.

Good night, dear readers. Pay no attention to the fervent tapping upon my keyboard, should you hear it. Sleep well, and perhaps I'll have something new to share with you by morning.