Playing Catch Up

photo credit: schani via photopin cc

I’ve been incredibly bad about updating this blog recently, violating one of the rules I preach about. That rule, of course, is that you should update your blog on a regular basis. So, in order to play fair, I feel like I owe everyone an explanation. I actually have been writing the posts. What I haven’t been doing is giving them proper edits and posting them. So, on the good news front, you can expect some posts over the coming weeks.

The big question anyone has the right to ask is, “why haven’t you been posting?” The answer to the question is easy, but not simple. It’s been a matter of time. I can’t rightly say that, if I looked over everything I’ve been doing over the last month, I absolutely could not have found an hour here or there to get a post knocked into shape and posted. On a day-to-day basis, though, it’s felt that way.

This week, for example, I’ve been having terrible headaches and finding it more than a little difficult to do anything beyond the bare minimum. For those of you who, like me, tend to get chronic headaches, you know that it makes every task harder and, even when you force yourself to sit down and work, everything takes longer.

I’ve also been working on the preliminary stages of a few projects that are close to my heart. One is a podcast. I recorded a short, preliminary episode and a friend of mine is in the process of writing some music for it. I’ve been brainstorming ideas for the logo, along with ideas for episodes and thematic elements I’d like to hit on.

I’ve also gotten started on an idea for a limited run web-series that I’m planning to post on YouTube. There are a lot of moving parts involved with something like that, way more than you might think, even for something that I only expect to run 5-10 minutes per episode. At this stage in the game, I’m still hashing details in my own head and will soon be hashing those details with my presumptive partner in crime for this project, who will, for the moment, only be identified as Agent X. I will tell you this much, it involves food, and nerdery, and general good fun. It will not be scripted (mostly) and it will be reality-based.

Then, of course, there is the new Sam Branch novel, which I have continued to edit, one chapter at a time. Unlike the first two Branch novels, I am doing a hard edit on paper. Editing on paper is a very different process than editing on screen. The upshot is that I’m catching a ton of errors I would have missed on screen. So, you can all look forward to much a cleaner read with far fewer typos.

The downside is that editing on paper is a slower process, in part because it is just inherently slower, but also because I have to make the edits in the Word document after I do them down on paper. Then there is the fact that this novel is significantly longer. More good news, though. I am approximately 25-30% done. At this pace, the novel will go live sometime this summer.

I’ve also been hashing out the details for a crowdfunded project that is much, much closer to going live than anything else I’ve been working on. I’ve got some video work left that I need to get done, but that project is likely to go live in the next few weeks. Once it’s a little closer, I’ll talk about it so much that it will make you hate me a little. I don’t want to give away too much, but I’ll say this much. I’ve written a fair bit of fiction in the last year or so that isn’t Sam Branch-based and this project is all about providing you a way to get your hands on that fiction. So keep your eyes open for updates.

Then, of course, there is the regular old, run-of-the-mill work that keeps me fed and caffeinated. It’s not always interesting, but it’s always necessary. That eats a lot of time too.

So, like I said, the answer is easy, but not simple. I’ve been writing, a lot, and with any luck some of it will be in your hands very soon. I’ve been chipping away at projects, which I’m hoping will see the light of day this year. I haven’t given up on the blog, not by any stretch, and I’ve got some good ones coming your way over the next two to three weeks. So keeping tuning in.