Update: June 2025

Summer’s in full swing, which means it’s time tell you all about what I’ve been up to this June!

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My efforts this month have been focused on two fronts: covers and other final touches for standalone editions of Hanging at Crosbhothar, The Gale at Quiet Cove, and The Skull in the Tree and a rewrite of “Dusk and Dawn at Laufenden” for inclusion in a collection of short fiction.

If you’ve been following this blog lately, you’ve probably seen the covers. Everyone who’s commented on them so far thinks they’re fantastic, and I couldn’t agree more. Especially the latter two. When I first set out to self-publish reprints of these novelettes, I didn’t have a clear vision for what I wanted for the cover of The Gale at Quiet Cove. All I knew was I wanted a sort of minimalist theme across the whole novelette series, since Canva was the best available tool for cover design and anything too elaborate would be beyond its abilities.

At first, I was thinking about maybe a pearl or clamshell, since the selkies dive for pearls. Or a seal because…well, selkies. But when Rachel came back to me with the cover for Hanging at Crosbhothar, her use of color and silhouettes fired my imagination, so I decided to roll the dice and asked her to see if she could showcase the titular storm. Just in case this proved too complex, I had a simpler concept of a lightning bolt against a stormy sky as a backup, but she knocked it out of the park. Ruby Isle looked perfect silhouetted against storm clouds and surrounded by crashing waves.

The Skull in the Tree kinda had the opposite problem: I had a very clear idea of what I wanted–the cursed skull at the heart of the story nestled in some tree branches–but I was worried it might be too detailed for us to execute with Canva. Or if we did it well, it would be too different from the other two covers. But once again, Rachel came through. She found a skull that fit our established art style like a glove, and she tucked it seamlessly into some branches that did the same.

I still need to order proof copies of The Gale at Quiet Cove and The Skull in the Tree, but both books seem like they’re in excellent shape at the moment. Otherwise, all I have left to do is set prices and settle on release dates for all of them. My current vision is Hanging at Crosbhothar in October, The Gale at Quiet Cove in November, and The Skull in the Tree in December. But we’ll see what the future holds. It’s always possible there’s a hitch somewhere along the way.

Since “Dusk and Dawn at Laufenden” is so old and never reached a wide audience, I’ve decided to overhaul the story on a textual level. Pretty much all the big story beats and themes will remain the same, but I’m aiming to add a lot more detail. Not just tactile feel but also what Arlise thinks and feels as her orders cause the battle to become a massacre. I want to dig deeper into how this event traumatizes her and comes to define the choices she makes for the rest of her life.

So far, the rewrite looks like it’ll be heftier than the original. I’m almost halfway to the word count of the original version but somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the way through the first scene, and there are three of those. Progress hasn’t been fast, since I’m still getting used to writing prose again after all the worldbuilding in May, but it’s progress all the same.

For now, my plan is to finish the rewrite, then work on more stories for the collection about Arlise. Maybe I’ll dust off “In the Web of Fate”. Maybe I’ll start one of the other ideas noted in my outline. Only time will tell, but I look forward to telling you all about it in future updates.

You might’ve seen I also had some delightful, unexpected news on the poetry front earlier this month. I’d dusted off an old haiku, touched it up a little, and shared it in the workshop of a writing forum I’ve been on forever just to see what folks thought of the revisions, and the feedback was so overwhelmingly positive I decided to try submitting it for publication.

Normally, I wouldn’t bother. Most poetry markets pay so little and have so few readers it’s just not worth the hassle of carefully crafting submissions only to receive rejections anyway. But since this one seemed like a real winner, I sent it to 5-7-5 Haiku Journal. Four hours later, I received an acceptance. Their schedule moved like lightning, and my haiku released on June 12th. You can read it for online here.

Given my focus on action, adventure, and sword & sorcery lately, it’s probably no surprise I’ve been reading a lot of Robert E. Howard.

First, I finished off the Del Rey collection of his Middle Eastern adventures following the likes of El Borak, Kirby O’Donnell, and Steve Clarney. My favorites were probably Hawk of the Hills, “Blood of the Gods”, “Gold from Tatary”, and “The Fire of Asshurbanipal”, though I think I prefer the weird fiction version of the latter from the horror collection more.

More recently, I decided to finish off my Conan reread with “A Witch Shall Be Born” and The Hour of the Dragon. The former has a lot of cool concepts, but it’s a rare instance where Howard runs afoul of the old “show, don’t tell” rule; a lot of the most thrilling bits of the story are retold by other character rather than witnessed directly, which dulls their impact. Nevertheless, those cool concepts do make for some vivid moments: Conan on the cross, Thaug’s emergence from the Temple of Ishtar, Salome as the titular villainous witch.

I’m still early in The Hour of the Dragon, but it’s a far more satisfying tale. In a lot of ways, it reads like a greatest hits album of all the other Conan stories by REH. Also, Zenobia’s rescue of Conan from the dungeon in Belverus feels like it could’ve walked out of a fantasy romance, and I’m certain you could turn “Harem girl helps captured king escape sorcerer’s dungeon” into an awesome on-the-road fantasy adventure romance. Ahh, my brain’s giving me too many ideas to write again!

Once I finish The Hour of the Dragon, I’m hoping to pick up a complete collection of Howard’s westerns, which I’ve only read a few of in Del Rey’s The Best of Robert E. Howard series.

June might mark the start of summer, but it’s been an awfully rainy month. One of our wettest ever. Clear skies have been few and far between, so I haven’t really had a chance to go stargazing lately. Hopefully that changes in July and August!

At the same time, I don’t want to wish the rain away for long, because it’s been keeping temperatures down. As soon as the storms cleared off, they spiked into the 90s with heat indexes in the 100s. I’ll take thunderstorms over that any day of the week!

Now, whatever’s at the root of my nerve issues, it’s definitely not the weather. I’ve felt about the same as I did in May: better than when things were at their worst in February and March, but uncertain whether there’s any actual healing going on or I’ve just become accustomed to it. I have a hunch this could be cubital tunnel syndrome, but I can’t say for certain until my next visit to the doctor, when we can talk more about other diagnostic and treatment options.

Hopefully I’ll have some good news to share on all fronts in July.