Where to even start? This week started out decently and then rolled into a chaotic blur of images that I’m still trying to sort through. Part of this might be because 4 of the 5 school lunches weren’t stuff my son would eat. So I had to leap out of bed, make his lunch, get him dressed, get him breakfast, and the usual stuff. It snowed a bit earlier in the week and it’s been really cold, so none of us are interested in moving too much. Getting this kid out of a warm bed is a challenge since he scurries under pillows and his mountain of stuffed animals. If I do catch him then I can’t loosen my grip or I loose him again. This is regardless of whether he has pants on or not. Kids really don’t care if they’re butt naked as long as they’re doing what they want.
As far as work stuff, the week started with finishing an outline after meeting with the cover artist for Chasing Bedlam. Some teasers will be going up tomorrow because we ran into some technical difficulties. The new cover for Crossing Bedlam is a maybe for the debut day, which will be the 13th and promos going up on the 14th. Not that anyone is paying attention to this series. It’s weird that I get people saying they love the idea and like the posts on it. Yet, the book hasn’t moved in months and I’m stuck at 9 reviews. Kind of frustrating since I’ve heard some people over the last year say they finished the book and would review, but nothing. Hard to get my hopes up there. To be fair, none of my books are garnering much in the way of reviews even if they’re selling.
In other news, 3 of the 12 Ichabod Brooks short stories are finished. At least, they should be since I’m typing this up on Friday before I write the final section of the 3rd one. Also, I’m counting Starwind Egg, which I wrote last year. It was fun getting back into the actual writing instead of planning. Tuesday saw me complete 4 sections for Phantom Archer and I thought this would be amazing sailing. Then the cold, errands, and plain tiredness knocked me back to my usual 3 sections a day. My hope is to finish this by the end of the month and then ask for beta readers. The release time would be June and I’ll see what I do for marketing. Might leave it with the basics.
While writing Ichabod Brooks, I’m not working with the same level of detail that I usually do. Each character is a sentence and the plots are only 3 sentences. So I’m making up a lot as I go along. This might explain why I’m slowing down a bit. Each section is 2-4 pages, so I feel kind of worthless when it takes me 3 hours to get that far. I still have vivid memories of the time I wrote Prodigy of Rainbow Tower and was cranking out 3 multi-section, 20+ chapters a day. That was on weekends and weekdays would see one full chapter at night. I’d stay up until 2 AM and still have energy for work. The heck happened to that dynamo? Maybe it was the breakneck speed of those days that killed him off. Then again, I also had a desk to work out that instead of this bed with no back supporter and a downward view of the screen. Not to mention I got into too many political chats and debates on Thursday, which really messed me up. Might be stepping away from those until I’m done, especially since they never seem to go anywhere.
This weekend is going to be busy and I might not be around much. A friend is coming over today and we haven’t hung out in a few years. Fingers are crossed that nothing goes wrong like every other time we’ve tried. He’s staying the night too because Sunday is the annual Super Bowl party. Otherwise known as 4 people watch the game and everyone else talks until commercials start. This event has been going on since I was a kid, so it doesn’t matter which teams are playing (unless it’s the NY Giants) and it’s all about relaxing before going back to work. I don’t expect to be tweeting much during this period or selling many books. Be nice, but it’s really an uphill battle these days. At least I’m going to have a lot of fun and possibly have energy to get work done on Monday. Not holding myself to that, but I have goals I need to achieve.
Like:
- Continue writing Life & Times of Ichabod Brooks. Be nice to get another 3 short stories done, but the next 3 are rather meaty with a total of 21 scenes. Although, I’ve noticed that some scenes are better combined, so we’ll see.
- Get everything ready to go for Chasing Bedlam. I’ll probably take an hour to get the Amazon set up going and set up a post draft. Think I’ll use the opening scene for the teaser. Big thank you to the 14 volunteers for that debut.
- Biking, cooking, and the usual.
In downtime news, I’ve been watching the show ‘Lucifer’. Well, I watched it when it debuted and kept going, but it’s really become a guilty pleasure. It was the mid-season finale and I just can’t get the end of this scene out of my head because it was hilarious. At least I thought it was. Skip to the minute mark for the build up:
I have a bad memory bordering on terrible, so when events stick in my mind, they’re significant. Peta was there from the start. She still is in one way or another.
