I don’t know how to categorize this week.  Things happened, but I haven’t heard back about the potential job. Not surprising since schools were closed on Tuesday for the election and Wednesday for Diwali.  The waiting is always the worst part of any job hunt because it’s when things are beyond your control.  You’ve done all you can and now it’s up to the decisions of others and the universe.  I already knew things would be tough since the school year is already in its 3rd month.  Still, fingers will remain crossed and I’ll find some way to keep myself occupied while I wait.

Unfortunately, I quickly ran out of distractions.  Derailing Bedlam has been edited and started getting posted on Thursday.  I set up all of the M-W-F posts for January too, which gives me some breathing room as far as blogging.  A post tomorrow will be asking if there are any books that people want a teaser for, which sounds like an odd poll.  The truth is that I have 20 books to choose from and it isn’t always easy doing that.  Not that anything is making the books really move, but that’s another story.

Now for a mysterious piece of that story!

On Thursday, Derailing Bedlam began and I got a lot of positive responses in regards to Cassidy and Lloyd coming back.  It’s crude, violent, and rude, so it doesn’t appeal to everyone, but it’s fun escapism for some.  I mean, it isn’t like these two are supposed to be role-models.  Anyway, a person on Twitter sent me a message saying they downloaded the first two books and wanted to know where the third was.  I sent them a link to Protecting Bedlam, which was blog only last year.  Then, I wandered over to Amazon to check for sales and reads.  Nothing for Crossing Bedlam or Chasing Bedlam.  Okay, it might just be delayed.

It’s now Saturday morning and I still haven’t seen these sales turn up.  This isn’t the first or even twentieth time that somebody has contacted me about buying a book, but that never materializes.  Ever.  I’m really not sure what’s going on.  This makes me feel like I’m not getting the royalties for these books.  I’m fairly certain that these aren’t being counted in the rankings either, which is a problem.  As happy as I am that people are getting into my books, I kind of need the royalties to stay afloat.  Makes me wonder how many sales went unrecorded without me knowing too.  Not just for me, but for everyone.  It’s bizarre seeing people put a few hundred or even thousand bucks towards promoting, but walk away with barely enough to afford three large cheese pizzas.  This doesn’t increase my faith in Amazon either and that’s been dwindling ever since it felt like they abandoned their Kindle platform.  Do they even do commercials for it these days?

Writing aside, I did get a fun two days with my son.  Tuesday was a surprise trip to Legoland, which he’s never been too.  It was an hour drive for 2-3 hours of fun, but totally worth it.  They have two rides, a bunch of building spots, a 4-D movie theater, and a climbing play area based around Ninjago.  We’re still not sure what’s to do inside that play area since it’s built like a fort.  My son mentioned practice dummies and made it sound like there was a dojo within the climbing nets and walls.  All I know is that he’d go in and we wouldn’t be able to see him unless he went across this one spot.  We bought a new Lego set there too and had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory before heading home.

Overall, Tuesday was a great day that carried into Wednesday.  Nothing much there since my wife went back to work and my son and I were tired.  I did a little blog scheduling while he played with his Legos then it was grocery shopping, McDonalds, and we came home to play Lego Star Wars II on the PS2.  He’s getting better at it and we’re just running through the first 3 levels to build up enough points to buy Invincibility.  Makes the game fairly easy, but he acts like he has it no matter what.  We definitely need it before we hit the first of the vehicle levels because he isn’t very good at those.  Removing the threat of crashing will help him relax.  That’s all down the road though.

The coming week isn’t going to be much to talk about at this point.  I’m hoping to hear about the job.  My parents come back from a month long trip this evening, so they’ll be home and relaxing.  My son has off on Monday for Veteran’s Day, but I have a doctor appointment that day too.  All fairly mundane stuff.  Honestly, I really hope I can find a way to relax and de-stress.  As I said, my parents have been gone for a month and that put a lot more on my shoulders in terms of maintaining the house.  With them back, I might be able to muster the energy to start editing War of Nytefall: Rivalry.  The truth is that it’s my only project and I need to do something besides eating out of boredom and watching Naruto.

The problem is that I still don’t feel like I’m in the proper mental state to tackle one of the big things.  My mojo isn’t fully back and things keep happening that drive me back into the abyss.  Getting a job and some stability will certainly help there, so maybe I’m at the end of that road.  If for no other reason, I need to be able to get myself to a point where I can write new stuff again.  There’s still this sense of detachment when I read my own work.  It’s like another person did it.  Hopefully, diving into War of Nytefall: Rivalry will put some pieces back together.

So, what are the goals?

1. Keep eye on phone in case of call from school.
2. Start editing War of Nytefall: Rivalry.
3. Prepare more teasers.
4. Watch more Naruto.
5. Stop writing this post since it went over 1,000 words.
6. Cooking, cleaning, etc.