First, I’m going to show a project that came up yesterday at the last minute.  My son is into Kung Fu Panda, but only the 3rd one.  The bad guy is named Kai and uses these jade swords with chains attached.  Think a kid version of Kratos from God of War.  Also, he’s a yak.  Anyway, I took time out of editing Chasing Bedlam to put these together.  I fear they’ve already lost their appeal to him:

They don’t look perfect, but he wanted white ones and I knew putting the hilts on there would lead to them breaking fairly quickly.  Close enough made him happy for the afternoon though, which I claim as a win.  Earned myself some hot chocolate later that night.  Too bad that didn’t sit well with my stomach, but it was worth it.

Amid the chaos of the week, I managed to finish editing Chasing Bedlam.  It runs like the first one with a short story/episodic feel to it.  Cassidy has much more of a personality and Lloyd is a little more grounded, but still mouthy and violent.  Have to admit that the complaints about language, violence, and ‘sex’ were taken as challenges to up them a bit this time around.  No actual sex scenes, but a lot of innuendo, blunt subject matter, and sexual jokes.  Part of the reason is because the characters are a lot more relaxed and free this time around.  There’s also a twist that involves one of those three categories, so my mind didn’t stray very far.  Not to mention Lloyd is with Katie right now, so I liked having the psycho get into situations that tested his loyalty to her.  Showed that there are limits to what he will do.  I’m sure I’ll take some heat for this.

This has lead me to thinking about the third one because I figured out what adventure I wanted to do next.  It’s starting to come together, so I might use today and tomorrow to put some notes together.  At least I’ll choose the route.  Still having trouble with the title, which is typically a present participle (I think) word and ‘Bedlam’ afterwards.  This adventure has Cassidy and Lloyd on the first revived train outside of Nebraska and they have to help protect it.  Right now, I’m thinking of having Katie be a guest and maybe a few other old friends/enemies that appear.  Bart and someone from the previous book might show up.  The route I have now is going from Michigan to Portland, Oregon with some chaos in the middle that puts them on a different track and causes all sorts of mayhem.  There’s something else about this story that I was thinking of doing, but I might wait for tomorrow to ask about it.

I should talk about Legends of Windemere: The Spirit Well here since that’s the book I’m trying to sell.  It’s moving slow, which isn’t too surprising considering how this year has gone.  When trying to get promo spots, I found that a lot of December was taken and I had to claim what I could find.  Seems a lot of new books came out and people are pushing everything.  Can’t help, but think that it’s a final reach to grab some victory out of 2016 since I saw many authors talk about low sales all year.  I do have a special sale that starts Thursday:

The 2 Windemere bundles will be 99 cents from the 22nd to the 26th, so it’s 6 books for $2!  I guess I should ask if anyone wants an HTML of the post to put up on Friday or over the weekend.  Just feel weird doing that since I just asked for help with the new one.  Kind of settling on reblogs, but I guess I put it out there.

In other news, I only have this coming week before my son and wife are on break until 2017.  Not much Internet or writing then.  I’m hoping to get the Ichabod Brooks stories slightly planned out before the house is full.  Then again, Cassidy and Lloyd aren’t letting me go as you can tell from above.  That’s why I’m giving them the weekend.  Thinking of charging up the Kindle to read something off my ‘to read’ list that is at a point where I won’t finish unless I become rich enough to make a clone that will write my books for me.  I’d probably never do that in the first place.

So, what’s the plan for the week?

1. Ease into the days.  Ha!  Still have to get up in time to get little guy’s breakfast and lunch ready, get him dressed, and get him moving.
2. Outline and prepare Ichabod Brooks books.  This means new friends, new enemies, and new gear for him.
3. Chose a route for next Bedlam book.
4. Biking.
5. Read the rest of the Fairy Tail manga that I have.  Might pause on that to read a novel.  I feel really bad that I never get around to that.
6. Maybe I’ll start watching Supernatural from Season 1 while I work.  Have the first 9 seasons and I’ll keep going into January with it.
7. Prepare post for tomorrow.
8. Crap, I forgot the laundry!
9. Post a music video that I hope people listen to.  It’s a video game song remix, but I thought it was a lot of fun and helped inspire a little bit of ideas.  Never played the game though.