Find yourself a pair of cheap sunglasses
It's been quiet in here. Maybe too quiet. Typing and editing manuscripts is quiet business, I'm afraid. So is waiting on editor responses, be they good or bad. I could open my mailbox to find an awesome publishing offer, or another one of my submissions mailed back unopened with "PLEASE STOP SENDING ME STORIES" scrawled desperately across the envelope in red ink.
(There's a story behind that second one, but I'll save that for another day.)
My brain's a bit empty these days. I finished around fifteen assorted short stories and flash fiction bits in the last three months, all of which are awaiting responses, in line to be published, or sitting in the drawer in need of a tune-up. So, yeah, it's been a bit quiet. I'm working up novel manuscripts, working on outlines for follow-up novels, and kicking around ideas for an upcoming short story. It's kind of like Eastern Promises, but with less Viggo Mortensen and more vampires. Well, not vampires, per se. (They don't glitter, if that's what you're asking.) This, too, is a story for another day.
Flesh Trap is my main focus at the moment, typing up the second longhand draft and lining out the edits. I have a lot of work to do. The response I've gotten from the people that have read it, in bits and pieces, in different stages of development, has been pretty overwhelmingly positive so far. I feel like I'm on the right track. In the meantime, I've been sketching and painting again, after an embarrassingly long hiatus from drawing pursuits. I want to release Flesh Trap as a web serial with a series of companion illustrations, because I'm dumb and I micromanage stuff like that, and you're going to get illustrations because I said so.
So I've been experimenting. I call them Skull-Babies. I think they're cute and fun. I'm sure I have art professors out there who would probably disagree, and swear they taught me better than that. Oh, well. Watercolor, acrylic and pencil.
Hopefully next time you see me I'll have more to show for myself. Today is just not that kind of a day.
