Quickie Update

Hi all! I’ve been away for a loooong time and I feel I should provide an explanation.

Truth is, I just got overwhelmed with ‘doing’–running to this and that event, running to this writing group or that workshop, reading, writing, following social media, reviewing, blogging–it was all too much so I just stopped.

I’d been in this place before–feeling as though no matter how hard and fast I ran I could never keep up–and it sucked. So, it was cut stuff out, or go nuts. Besides, I wanted to spend more time writing. After all, that’s the purpose of all this, right? We run around promoting ourselves to sell the books we write, and we blog to communicate about our passion for writing as well as about those fabulous books. But we write because that’s what we were born to do.

So I kicked social media and all the rest to the curb for a bit, sat back, and wrote.

 

I have been rewriting the third book in my Rise of the Papilion trilogy, weaving together the half manuscript I wrote last year with new material. It is a big job, a huge puzzle getting all the disparate pieces to fit. But it is coming together, and this time I’m not rushing. Rather I’m letting the thing breathe, adding or rewriting as the story comes to me.

Sadly, I haven’t published any new stories on the blog lately, mostly because the most recently written pieces have been submitted to magazines and I’m waiting the responses. I did write a story called Falling Free which I hope will be turned into a short comic by the grace of my super-talented sister, illustrator and soon to be animator, Amy Hands. (Click on the link to check her out on deviant art). I’ve also been journaling and writing poetry, basically just seeing where the creative muse takes me. Journaling was something I used to do a lot but had stopped, thinking: What’s the point? I’m never going to read this again. But I went back to it, and rather than pages of “blah, blah, blah”, I closed the notebook with vignettes, focused thoughts, and spontaneous literary expressions scrawled across the pages. I understand this to be a development of a new character’s Voice. I’m certain that, at some point, it will all come together to create a new kind of story for me. More on that to come.

In the meantime, here’s what’s coming up on the blog in the next little while:

– author interviews with Scott Toney of Breakwater Harbor Books, and Susanne Leist

– guest post by the wonderful author and all-time best supporter Belinda Hughes

– more book reviews

– new posts on writing and the writing experience

– info on the release of the paperback version of Wolf’s Bane, which I hope to release in the next 2-3 weeks

– updates on ongoing and new writing projects, including Berserker, book 3 in my fantasy trilogy

Thanks to everyone who reads, shares, comments on and otherwise supports this blog! Also, I’m always looking for people to collaborate with, so if you have an idea drop me a line!