ISWG First Wednesday: Monthly Question & a New Release!

Well, another month has come and gone. Right at the very end of February I had a significant event, but I will save that for after this month’s question:

March Question:

Have you "played" with AI to write those nasty synopses, or do you refuse to go that route? How do you feel about AI's impact on creative writing? 

No, I have not used AI for any element of my writing. I am hesitant to use it, even for synopses, because I think it’s sort of a slippery slope. So far, I’ve even held off using it to develop illustrations for my blog posts. It’s just not a place I’m comfortable going right now.

Will my outlook change as time goes by and the technology, and the ethics evolve? Could be. But for now, I’m going to keep it old school and wait and see what the future brings.

Now, on to more exciting things. Leap day was an exciting one here at Deliverers Towers. The final book of the series, Sparkling Mist of Time, was set loose upon the world.

So far, it's been well received. I've written before about what a convoluted process it was to complete this book. In the end, though, it was worth it all and I believe that I could not have ended the series any better than this. Many thanks to everyone who has assisted along the way. 

So what's next? I've already alluded to that. I'll have more info as things progress. The point is, the journey will continue and I will be following my own path. How cool is that? If you had asked me a year and a half ago, I would have said they journey was over. Just goes to show that you can never say never.

I'll be making another post soon. Until then, Peace!

A Writer's Week #126: Nearing the Finish

 It's been a while since I gave an update on my WIP, The Deliverers 4: Sparkling Mist of Time. That's because a lot of great things have been happening--lots of shows to be specific. I have not been idle on the writing front, however. Book 4 is moving right along, and I am happy to report that the first draft is almost complete. 

Right now, I've written over 43,000 words, and am on track to hit 50,000. This book will definitely complete the Deliverers Series. My concern with writing the ending to the series has always been doing the series justice. I put pressure on myself to make sure that the end of a book works and is a fitting ending to the story. This time around, I'm really feeling it as I'm wrapping up the entire series.

As the book was initially coming to a close, I think I was trying a little to hard to figure out the ending. I was trying to force things, so all my ideas were a little bit contrived. Finally, I just kind of let it all go and stopped thinking so hard. Once I was able to do that, it started coming in bits and pieces. Finally, all the pieces came together. I think the ending as I picture it now is a natural and proper path to complete the story.

Book 4 is really starting to come together, I should have the first draft completed shortly. Emily Hurst Pritchett has started sketching out cover ideas. I'm also experimenting with the book layout. This will be the first time I'm doing it on my own, so there's a little more pressure than usual.

Anyhow, I hope to have the book out by either February or March. Stay tuned, I'll be sure to keep you updated. In the meantime, I hope you and yours have a very happy Thanksgiving.

IWSA Wednesday First Post

Hello! Happy November, and welcome to my first Insecure Writer's Support Group Wednesday post!

The awesome co-hosts for the November 1 posting of the IWSG are PJ Colando, Jean Davis, Lisa Buie Collard, and Diedre Knight!

Every month, we announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say. 

Remember, the question is optional!

November 1 question: November is National Novel Writing Month. Have you ever participated? If not, why not?

Well, the short answer is no.  I just have trouble writing like that. My writing pace tends to be slow and slower.  After all, it's taken me nine years to write book 4 of the Deliverers Series.  After about 7 years off to pay more attention to my family as they grew up, it is almost complete.

Once I've finished writing, it's been edited, and artist Emily Hurst Pritchett has completed the artwork, it will be launch time. Hopefully that will be sometime in March. 

I've never really been very good at book launches, or marketing in general for that matter. Anyhow, I could really use all the suggestions you could give when the time comes.

I guess that's all I've got this time around. Thank you for allowing me to become part of the group and I look forward to traveling around and meeting you all. 

Deliverers 4: Chapter 6--Tavern Talk

On the night before my first show in forever (CT Renaissance Faire), here's the 6th chapter of my current work in progress, The Deliverers 4: Sparkling Mist of Time.

Matty’s mother got them what she called “some appropriate attire,” (which meant a linen shirt, cloth vest, and brown breeches for Eric and a homespun dress and bonnet for Kate.) and put them right to work. Eric was sent to chop wood to feed the fires in the kitchen and the taproom while Kate served drinks and meals to guests. After he was through chopping, Eric was sent to help Matty pour drinks. The taproom had filled up as the afternoon went on and soon it was filled with the buzz of conversation.

As they worked, both Kate and Eric kept their ears open for any information regarding the movements of the British but heard none. Most of the talk was about the harvest and the weather. Prospects for the upcoming winter appeared bleak.

“Aye, geese have headed south early this year,” one farmer muttered into his beer. “They don’t hang about when cold weather’s nigh. We’ll be gettin’ frost soon enough, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“You’re right enough about that, I’ll warrant Sam,” another said. “But I’ll take the cold over what I heard’s on its way.”

“What’s that, Nathaniel?” Sam asked.

“Now don’t tell me you haven’t heard the rumors from down Norfield Parish way,” Nathaniel replied.

“Well, I heard some talk about King George’s regulars makin’ raids and such down county, but I didn’t put much stock in it—especially after I heard some other rot.”

Here Eric, who had been sweeping nearby, pricked up his ears.

“And what rot would that be Sam?” Nathaniel asked.

“Well that good King George has enlisted spirits to fight for him or some such,” Sam scoffed. “Talk is they come screechin’ outta Devil’s Den. That can’t be right. The only spirits I’ve ever heard tell of were behind the church on Cemetary Hill, but I ain’t ever seen ‘em. It’s just stuff our mams used to frighten us when we were lads.”

“Aye, that may be true enough Sam, but the other day I had a visit from my brother who lives down on the coast in Norwalk. He said that the British had attacked Fairfield and burned the town, or part of it anyway.”

“They never,” Sam said. “Why would the King’s troops attack Connecticut? We haven’t made any trouble, not like those rabble rousers in Massachusetts or Pennsylvania. Why would King George want to bother with us?”

“There’s some that would not take kindly to that sort of talk,” Nathaniel growled. “We can’t let ol’ George and his lobsterbacks keep pushing us around, I say.”

“And there’s some that would call that kind of talk treason, Nathaniel Goodbody,” Sam snarled back.

“All right, all right, calm yourself,” Nathaniel replied. “I’m not tryin’ to pick a quarrel with you Sam Wainwright. I’m only tellin’ you what my brother told me, but you haven’t let me tell you the strangest part.”

“And what might that be, pray?”

“These lobsterbacks, oh all right have it your way,” he spluttered, catching Sam’s look. “These British regulars are being led by a blue man.”

“Blue man? What kind of rubbish is that?” Sam cried, smacking his pewter mug down on the table.

“My brother says it ain’t rubbish,” Nathaniel countered. “They’ve hit a good many towns. The blue man is all sparkly and leads a troop of spirit soldiers—the Ghost Brigade folk’re callin’ them.”

At the mention of the sparkling blue man, Eric’s stomach churned, and his knees shook. This was definitely not normal. He kept sweeping, fighting the urge to run and tell Kate.

“The ghost what?” Sam asked incredulously.

“The Ghost Brigade,” Nathaniel repeated. “The spirits are all sparkly, too—walk around in a mist that glimmers like fireflies. Folk say they’re the spirits of the dead what deserted from the French an’ Indian wars an’ were hung for it. They pop up in the night or the early morning, scare the dickens out of everyone an’ then the regular troops rush in, secure the town, burn part of it if there’s any resistance, an’ then pop up in another town a few days later and do the same thing all over again. Word is they’re headed this way fast.”

Sam stared at him as if he had sprouted wings. “Nat Goodbody, have you taken leave of your senses? You’d best get back to mending the roof of your house. You’ve had a drop too much to drink, I’m thinking. We’d both best be getting on home, any road. Hey lad, what do we owe you?”

“Uh, one and six,” Eric stammered.

“Here y’are,” Sam said handing him some coins as he and Nathaniel rose unsteadily from their chairs. “Keep the change, but you’d best hide it under your mattress. Don’t want any Ghost Brigade to get their hands on it, haw, haw!”

The two men lurched out the front door as Eric rushed to find Kate.

The Deliverers 4: Chapter 2 -- Back, Back, Back

The Hallway of Worlds had not changed. The red-carpeted corridor stretched on seemingly forever to his left and right. Identical rectangular doors with panes of frosted glass in their upper halves lined the Hallway. Behind him, he knew, his own door had changed back to resemble the others—it always did. Golden chandeliers hung at intervals from the ceiling, their many candles burning without a flicker in the still air.

Without warning, a desk materialized on his right. It was littered with papers and files. A quill was stuck in a jar of India ink. Behind the desk stood the smiling figure of an old man. He was dressed in blue shimmering robes and wore a conical blue hat with golden stars and moons on it. Blue eyes twinkled behind gold wire rimmed spectacles and his long white beard cascaded over the front of his robes.

Darting around the desk with no hint of age, the old man embraced Eric roughly. “Hello my boy, so good to see you. Happy birthday, by the way. The others should be here shortly. Things are moving so quickly that I sent Stig to Calendria to get the others while I called you. Oh yes, here they come now.”

Eric turned and saw his friends hurrying down the Hallway toward him.

A girl with long black hair rushed up and hugged him. “Hi Eric. Happy birthday,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. She looked up at him with sparkling violet eyes. “I really missed you.”

“Uh, hi Kate,” Eric stammered. Kate looked even older than when he had last seen her that past summer. “Yeah, I missed you, too.”

“Hey, what about me?” a dwarf with a long red beard asked as he grabbed Eric’s hand and pumped it up and down. “I missed ya too, don’t ya know. It sure is good t’ see ya, laddie. You’re a sight for sore eyes and no mistake. Ain’t that right, birdie?”

“Yes, quite,” agreed a large white owl who had just alighted on the Gatekeeper’s desk. “How are you, my boy? I hope you’ve had a splendid birthday.”

“It just got a whole lot better, Stig, thanks,” Eric said, smiling. “Hey Hallo, how’s everything?”

“Oh can’t complain, can’t complain,” the dwarf replied. “Then again, if I did, no one’d listen more ‘n likely. Hey, birdie said it was your birthday. Congrats lad. What’re ya up to now?”

“I’m 14.”

Hallo laughed. “Hey not bad, not bad. He’ll be catchin’ us soon, eh birdie?”

“He certainly is growing up before our eyes,” Stig said with the hint of a smile.

“I’ve got a long way to go to catch you two,” Eric said, laughing. Stig was over 400 years old and Hallo was approaching his 200th birthday. “But at least I’m older than one of us.”

“Hey, be nice. I’ll be as old as you in a month,” Kate said.

“Well, now that we’ve got that all sorted out, perhaps we should get to the task at hand,” the Gatekeeper cut in.

“Yes sir,” Eric said. He had been so happy to see his friends he had almost forgotten everything else.

 “What’s our Assignment this time?”

The Gatekeeper frowned. “It’s really something a bit out of the ordinary this time my boy.”

“A bit out of the ordinary, sir?” he asked. What could be more out of the ordinary than any of the other Assignments he had been on so far?

“Yes. Do you remember your last Assignment?”

“Why sure we do,” Hallo said. “We had t’ find that there Dragon’s Voice on the Dragon Islands.”

“Yes and you did a marvelous job. Do you remember the last time you were in the Hallway of Worlds?”

“Yes, you took us to that door that was chained and locked. The sparkling mist had stopped leaking out from under it,” Kate said, frowning.

Eric remembered, too. That door was the one door in the entire Hallway that did not have a world behind it. Supposedly it was a door to nowhere and had been used to store matter from worlds that had failed. The matter, or sparkling mist because that is what it looked like, had begun to seep out from under the door and was finding its way into troubled worlds, contributing to their instability. The mist had shown up on two worlds that they had visited.

When they had returned from the successful completion of their last Assignment, the Gatekeeper had informed them that the real reason the door had been padlocked was not to keep people from wandering in, but to keep someone or something from getting out.

The Gatekeeper nodded. “And I told you that whatever was in there had torn a hole out of that non-world and was loose.”

“Yeah, I remember. They could be anywhere now.”

“Yes they could,” the Gatekeeper agreed. “However, I now have a bit more information.”

“What have you discovered?” Stig asked.

“Well, this creature is made from the combined matter of many failed worlds. That means its makeup is quite complex. I believe it is capable of assuming whatever guise it desires.”

“That’s gonna make him tough t’ nail down, don’t ya know,” Hallo said, removing his red cloth cap and scratching his head.

“I’ve been doing a bit of checking,” the Gatekeeper said. “As you are aware, I have a number of different teams that go out on Assignments clearing up problems on troubled worlds. I have asked them to keep their eyes open for signs of this creature. They all reported encounters with sparkling mist on their Assignments, which confirms my suspicions that the mist is at the root of the recent unrest on all worlds over the last few years.”

“So you mean it’s been going on longer than you thought?” Kate asked.

“Exactly,” the Gatekeeper replied. “This creature has been working quietly behind the scenes and I knew nothing about it—something that has not happened in a very, very long time.”

“Besides the sparkling mist, has anyone discovered anything else about the creature?” Eric asked.

“It was very elusive, although it has been sighted periodically,” the Gatekeeper said. “Finally, one team got a definite fix and I was able to put a Tracker on it.”

“What’s a Tracker?” Eric asked.

“An agent trained in surveillance and disguise. They can move easily from world to world. Once they are on the trail, they are very difficult to shake.”

“Well, that’s news to me,” Stig said, ruffling his feathers. “All this time, and you never told me about them.”

The Gatekeeper chuckled. “Don’t get your feathers ruffled my dear friend. I’m entitled to keep one or two secrets. Trackers would not be nearly as effective if everyone knew about them. Anyway, the Tracker has followed the elusive creature to an unexpected location.”

“Where is that?” Stig asked.

“Eric’s world,” the Gatekeeper said simply.

“My world,” Eric cried. The thought of a strange creature that could change itself into anything wreaking havoc in his world was scary. “Where is it, exactly?”

“The question is not where my boy, but when,” the Gatekeeper replied. “The creature has discovered a way to use the sparkling mist to punch a hole in the very fabric of time itself.”

“So he could be anywhere at any time in the history of Eric’s world,” Stig mused.

“Wow. Have ya got any idea where…er…um, when he is?” Hallo asked.

“He is on Eric’s world during a conflict known as the American Revolution, and,” here the Gatekeeper looked intently at Eric, “He’s in Eric’s home town.”

“Candlewood Corners? But why?” Eric cried.

The Gatekeeper frowned. “I don’t know for sure, but I have a guess. The creature is trying to change history, most likely with the intent to tear the fabric of Eric’s world apart.”

“Why?” Eric asked.

“My information indicates that it is trying to undermine the stability of the universe. For that it needs to gain power, more specifically, matter. Destroying a few worlds would give it plenty of matter to work with.”

“Wow,” Kate said. “That’s bad.”

“Bad. Bad?” Eric shrieked. “It’s terrible. Some whacked out creature is trying to destroy my world. We can’t let that happen. We have to do something!”

“Yeah, Eric’s right, we gotta do somethin’,” Hallo agreed. “But, er, what?”

“Of course we have to do something. We can’t let worlds be destroyed if we can help it,” the Gatekeeper said calmly. “I’m going to send you all back in time to Eric’s world, as long as that’s all right with all of you.”

“I’m in,” Eric said firmly.

“We wouldn’t dream of not helping Eric save his world,” Kate said. “We’re all in.”

“Absolutely,” Stig said.

“Ya can count on me, don’t ya know,” Hallo agreed.

“Thanks guys,” Eric said, tearing up. “But it’s not just my world. We gotta stop this thing. If it gets enough power, who knows what it’ll do.”

“Splendid. Now, let’s see. My, my, this is going to take some doing,” the Gatekeeper said, stroking his beard.

“Don’t we just go through my door?” Eric asked.

Kate rolled her eyes. “Oh Eric, please. If we did that we’d just wind up on your world in the present.”

Eric blushed. “Oh yeah, true.”

“As I was saying, this will take some doing,” the Gatekeeper repeated. “Now let me see, it’s been a long time…”

The Gatekeeper approached the door and placed his right hand on its frosted glass window. He turned his hand counter-clockwise and the door turned with it, blurring and spiraling like it had been liquefied. When he removed his hand, the door was upside down. The Gatekeeper smiled.

“There, that should do it,” he said with satisfaction. “When you enter, you will find things are a little bit different Eric. Good luck to all of you. This Assignment may be your most critical.”

With that, Eric pushed to door open and they all passed through.

A Writer's Week #118: Progress

 This week has been busy, but good. I was able to make my weekly writing goal. I wrote almost 2,200 words, and the book is moving along. I'm at over 18,000 words and things are beginning to get interesting. I know that the plot will take an interesting twist shortly, but I'm not exactly sure how everything will progress from that point. I have a general idea of the direction I will be taking, but nothing concretely mapped out. Hopefully, I will be able to sort things out smoothly as I go. We shall see.

On the series rebrand front, my illustrator has done a bunch of thumbnail sketches for the first book cover. I find the creative process fascinating. Each person seems to have their own fairly unique approach. She'll use those thumbnails to narrow down her ideas to two or three cover sketches. She should have those ready sometime this week, then I'll get a chance to give my feedback. I'm really excited to see what she comes up with. Some of the thumbnails were quite intriguing.

As I contemplate what the cover might look like, it reminds me that I'm going to have to do quite a bit of work re-doing my marketing materials. I'm going to do new book trailers for all three books. At this point I'm not sure if I'll keep what I have and just replace the visuals, or if I'll rework them all from scratch. I'm thinking it will have to be the latter, but I won't know until the artwork and cover designs are complete.

I'll also have to redesign the blog, rework the interiors of the books, and numerous other small things. I plan to do book launches for each of the three as if they were being published for the first time. Really, they are going to be brand new. Again, I'm really excited.

Once I have some working sketches to share, I will also reveal the talented artist's name and show you some of her previous work. Hopefully, that will be next time. See you then!

A Writer's Week #117: A Fresh Start

 Hi everyone. I hope you have all had a great week. My week has been pretty eventful. It's been a while since my last Writer's Week post, but I feel like I've finally done something that's worthy of a post. I have resumed work on The Deliverers 4: Sparkling Mist of Time. The first 12 chapters were completed in 2016. Since then, I have not done much with it aside from some editing and chapter rewrites. Over the last couple months, I've written four more chapters. 

This week, I made the decision to complete the book by the end of this summer and get it ready for publication in time for Christmas. It will take a lot of work, but I'm extremely excited. So, once again I will set a goal to write 2,000-3,000 words per week in order to make those deadlines. I'll write a post each week to keep you updated on my progress.

Coming to this decision was a long process. Writing is a solitary activity. You have to be focused on the task, and it's easy to doubt yourself. I was burned out after three years of intense activity--writing books, writing blog posts, coordinating book layout and design, marketing, selling books at various shows. All of this was happening while my children were growing bigger every time I turned around. So, I stepped back for what I thought would be a year or two. That turned into six or seven. After some talks with my wife and other family members and friends, I decided to buckle down and get back in the game.

Now, I'm starting from scratch. With that in mind, I've come to the difficult decision to redesign and rebrand the series. I agonized over this for the better part of the last year. Daniel Vogel, the artist for the first three books, was just 14 when he did the cover and map for Sharky and the Jewel. He did a fantastic job on all the books and I will always be very grateful for his contributions. However, that was 11 years ago, and I felt that it was time to update the look of the series.

Once I came to that decision, I had to find an illustrator. Daniel has moved on to other things, so I spent a month searching for an illustrator whose style matches my vision for The Deliverers and would be appealing to middle grade readers. Last week, I found her. I'll announce who it is in a future post, but this week, we agreed to partner with each other, and I couldn't be more excited. Right now, she's reading the first book and will be working on some rough sketches next week. Really looking forward to seeing what she comes up with and sharing the journey with all of you. 

Have a great week!

A Writer's Week #116: Charting a Course

This week was a busy one at work, so I did not accomplish as much as I'd hoped. Still, I managed to get a fair amount done in spite of it all. When I stopped work on The Deliverers 4 in mid-2014, I did so because I was feeling burned out writing-wise and stressed about life in general. As I look back on that time, I think one of the underlying reasons I decided to stop was that I just wasn't satisfied with where the fourth book was heading. The plot was a little one-dimensional and I just didn't have the energy to at the time to figure out exactly what was wrong, tear it down and rebuild it.

I never really totally let the book go, however. From time to time I'd pull out a printed copy of what I'd written and make a few changes here and there. I'd also catch myself turning over different ideas and alternatives in my head. Sometimes, a completely different idea for a book would pop into my head, but each time I'd discard it as either too much effort, or not good enough. All the time, Eric and his friends were in the back of my mind patiently waiting for me.

So here we are in Fall, 2016 and Eric and Stig have started nudging me (I guess they were getting impatient). So last weekend I fired up my laptop and discovered it needed 58 updates! As I said earlier, this week at work was really busy. I'm working on a big project with a high learning curve.

All the same, I managed to tackle some of my plot issues and work out an updated and improved story line. I still haven't figured out the ending, but I did plot out the majority of the book. I was also able to begin rewriting. While I haven't progressed very far in that regard, I've started and that's what counts.

My goal for the coming week is to continue to work on rewrites and to begin writing writing the rest of the book the following week. Once I get to that point, I'll start posting parts of the book here. Please feel free to provide feedback. As I said last week, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this book. I may go the full release route as I've done with the previous three, or I might just release it on Kindle, or maybe I'll just serialize it here. We'll see where this journey takes me. I hope you'll come along for the ride.

I'll see you next week. Peace.

A Writer's Week #115: Shaking Off the Dust

Happy weekend everyone! Wow, I can't believe it's been over two years since my last blog post. Time sure does have a way of rushing by. It's been a good, if busy, two years, but all in all things have been good here. I hope you had a good couple of years as well.

When last I posted, I was working on book four in the Deliverers Series. Since then I've been busy working (new job with the same company), and watching the family grow. Christian is now a freshman in high school and Abby is in 7th grade and they're doing all sorts of thing from marching band to bowling leagues to Girl Scouts. Stephanie has been running races and is trying to run a race in all 169 towns in Connecticut (she's at 41 right now). Needless to say, things have been quite busy.

Periodically, I've entertained thoughts of getting back to my writing. I've struggled with the question of whether to finish Eric's story, or to venture out on a new path. After much internal debate, I've decided to continue Eric's journey through to the end. I'm not sure where that will lead, but right now completing his story is the goal.

I am currently in the process of reevaluating what I've written on book 4 so far. Once I've done that, I'll rewrite the parts that need to be and carry on. I don't know if I'll publish the remaining books in the series or not. I will definitely serialize them here and I may wind up publishing a Kindle version. We'll see how things go. I would dearly love and appreciate any feedback you could give as I post pieces of the story here. That would be a great help!

To kick off this next phase of my writing life, I'm making the kindle versions of books 2 & 3 available free on Amazon for the next few days. It's the first time I've made them available for free. Please download, read and write a review. Here is the link to my Amazon writer's page:

https://www.amazon.com/Gregory-S.-Slomba/e/B005PFPA64/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

That's it for now. I'll be back with another update soon.

A Writer's Week #114: Summer Perspective

Hi again everyone. I hope you've all be having a great summer--I know I have. In June, I decided to take a break from blogging and writing. I'd been going at it nonstop for almost three years and I needed to stop and take stock. Now that summer's coming to a close and my kids are getting ready to go back to school (did I just hear a loud groan form the living room?), I think it's time to get back on the horse and continue my writer's journey.

Before my little vacation, I'd been about 56 pages and 13,000 words into book four in the Deliverers Series, Sparkling Mist of Time. At the time I had some questions about the direction of the book, how short I was worried it was going to be, and whether or not I was going to have to combine my vision for books four and five into one larger series-ending book. Frankly, I was too wrapped up in things to look at those issues objectively, hence my main reason to step back and get a little perspective.

Last week, after not thinking much about writing at all for a couple of months, I printed out the 56 pages of book four and sat down to read it. I have to admit I did so with more than a little trepidation. I thought for sure I'd find the thing was full of holes. Turns out, it held up pretty well. Some of the issues I was worried about didn't seem to be issues at all with the distance of a couple of months.

I edited it pretty heavily, but the overall plot structure this far is sound. In fact, I came up with  a solution to a

situation that had been bugging the heck out of me without having to really think much about it. It resolved itself as I read. I've figured out who's behind all the sparkling mist that's been seeping into troubled worlds. The upshot is that I think I have a firm direction and I'm reenergized to bring the rest of the book to life.

So, I am setting myself a goal of 2,000 words a week. This is the same modest goal that I've had in the past and one that works well for me. Hopefully, I'll be able to write much more each week, but if time becomes an issue, no worries. As usual, I'll keep you up to date on my progress. Have a great week!

A Writer's Week #112: Nothing to Do With Writing

Hi all! Sorry it's been a while since I last posted. I spent a large part of this last week away on business in Washington, DC. I had a very  interesting and enlightening time attending different sessions on training. I found the ones focusing on e-learning techniques and performance support to be particularly interesting.

Of course, it was not all business. There was a great networking evening that was held at the Smithsonian Air && Space Museum. That was really cool. We had the museum all to ourselves. I had an interesting time in the flight simulator spinning around trying to shoot down planes while upside down (got 7 of them--the world is safe for democracy!). I've sprinkled some pictures from the night throughout this post.




Needless to say, this did not leave any chance for writing. I wasn't totally idle, however. I let my wife, Stephanie read the 59 pages of The Deliverers 4: Sparkling Mist of Time. I have been having a rough time focusing on writing lately. Although there have been a lot of distractions, I had been wondering if the main reason I've been dragging my feet might be that deep down I wasn't happy with the story itself.

Stephanie's reaction indicated that my hunch was correct. She thought it was okay, but that it was moving very quickly. She couldn't see how it would be a full length book. That was my worry as well. I've written about this a couple of times. I think there will be a couple of surprises coming that will flesh out the story, but it's still a valid concern. She also said there were a couple of things that she couldn't pinpoint that didn't feel right. She's going to read it again to get a better sense of what.

Anyway, I'll have to do an assessment of my own to figure out why I'm not 100% happy with the way this project is going. I'll let you know what I find next week. By the way, a very happy Mother's Day to all mothers out there. I hope you all have an excellent day!

A Writer's Week #110: Great Press

Hi all. It's been a couple weeks since my last writing post, but that does not mean things haven't been happening. I've been blessed to have received some fantastic press and some nice reviews for The Golden Dragon of Ang. 

First, Books, Ink interviewed me about my writing and the Deliverers Series. The interview was picked up and run on several local Hamlethub pages.

Next, author Karen Pokras reviewed The Golden Dragon of Ang on her website. It was a fantastic review that she also posted on Amazon. Thank you Karen, I'm glad you enjoyed the book. It seems that the consensus among folks who have read the book so far is that it is the best Deliverers book yet. That's really cool because to me that means the series is getting more engrossing and that hopefully I'm growing as an author.

Earlier this week, Books, Ink ran a follow up interview featuring what they call "7 Bookish Questions". It was fun to talk a little about books that influenced me and some other bookish thoughts. It was a really fun interview to do. Thanks for the opportunity, Sally Allen.

Finally, in addition to Karen's review, I received two other five star reviews from young readers on Amazon.
Things are starting to move and I'm really looking forward to my upcoming appearances later this spring and summer. As I confirm dates, I'll be posting them on my Appearances page. I should have two more confirmed in the next couple of weeks.

On the writing front, not much has been accomplished in the last couple of weeks. I've written only about 500 words on book number four. The word total now stands at 13,000 over about 60 pages and 12 chapters. This book has been a little puzzling. On the whole, I'm very happy with the way it's progressing, but I'm at a point right now where life is getting in the way of writing. There are lots of changes happening, especially at work, making it hard for me to focus. Still, I have had an important development in that I've come up with a working title for book four. How does The Deliverers 4: Sparkling Mist of Time sound? Let me know what you think. Have a great week!