Safe!

Today started well before dawn. My daughter’s man told us about something he thought sounded absurd, Maple Milk. He said people drink it like chocolate milk. Then he brought some home for a laugh. I decided it’s actually pretty awesome in a cup of coffee. However, that coffee was to go, and away we went.

My daughter set her app to avoid all the toll roads, and the drive to the airport was kind of an adventure. We wound up on side streets in warehouse areas, but it did send us to Logan International. We both spotted a highway sign that said Delta flew out of area E, and made for that.

When we got there, I didn’t see a Delta logo in sight. She whipped to the curb, then said, “I don’t know what to do.”

We’d both seen the sign, so I bailed out. After a hug and some well wishes I marched inside to a sea of people. I was completely lost, but a nice employee found me. This location was for Delta’s international flights. The ones I wanted were on a completely different concourse. He gave me directions, but not complete directions, and I was off.

This involved an escalator up, a skybridge over the freeway, a hike through an open-air parking garage, another even bigger skybridge, an escalator down, a long tunnel and about two miles of effort. I arrived at a whole different sea of people.

There was a huge line for the kiosks, another huge line to drop off my bag, followed by an even longer and more elaborate line for security. After that it was only about half a mile to my gate. We got to the airport two hours early, and I basically walked right onto the plane.

I had a 1.5 hour layover in Minneapolis, and was kind of looking forward to it. Once again, I had to change concourses. I’d been well stretched out after Salem, Lexington, and Concord. This airport had broken people movers, so I had to leg it out. I arrived with a few minutes to spare for a cup of coffee, sadly without maple milk.

Getting out of Minneapolis was kind of like a rodeo, and I was the cowboy. After we reached altitude the ride smoothed out and it was easy going.

This trip was a whirlwind, but I’m so glad we did this together. There were emotions aplenty, and leaving was pretty hard, I don’t mind telling you. We saw and did a lot of things along the way, even though the goal was to get clear across the country.

The minute I got home, Old What’s Her Face handed me the bills and reminded me today is payday. The adventure is truly over now.

I’m writing this from my usual spot at home. I have a couple days to rest up, then have to go back to work.

Let’s get this show on the road

It’s time for my daughter and I to hit the road. I’ve previously mentioned here that she’s moving to New Hampshire. She needs her car and that’s how we’re getting there.

I’ll try to update from the road. Might get the chance at some cool photographs.

What you need to know is that I’m going to be kid of scarce. I love all your blogs and interacting with everyone. I might have to do what I can and forego the rest.

Different kind of day

Once again, I failed to produce new words. Everything I did was writing related, but it doesn’t involve the new stories.

After getting paid, and paying the bills, I reached out to my formatter. Once I get the invoice, I’ll take care of that immediately.

I then decided to make just one more pass over the MS. There were two places where I wanted to use the word ‘baritone’ in the story. It’s an author thing, I suppose.

This led to another pass over the manuscript, and I’m still excited to share it with everyone.

I’m parked on cover art, and will share it once everything comes together. I’m hoping to have a May release for this one. It’s been finished since Fall, but I’ve been fiddling with other things.

I also have a finished MS for Lizzie & the hat, and hopefully can get it together for the Halloween season this year.

In other news:

My daughter’s boyfriend has worked his butt off over the last few months to become an air traffic controller. He passed everything with flying colors. This led to a lot of debate about where he would get assigned, but he got what he wanted. He’s going to the Boston site, but it’s actually situated in New Hampshire.

This means Dad get’s to help his daughter move to New Hampshire. We’re leaving on April 8th and I took the whole week off. I’m looking forward to some quality father/daughter time, and we’re not going to kill ourselves just to get finished.

She needs her car, so that’s what we’re taking, then I’ll fly home.

We’re taking a northerly route, and honestly if we had passports, I’d have taken the Canadian highways. I’m not a fan of gigantic cities or traffic, but I can handle them.

Our route has such things along the way as Yellowstone, Devil’s Tower, the Buffalo National Grasslands, Deadwood, Mt. Rushmore, Lake Erie, and Niagara Falls. (She’s excited to see Mt. Rushmore and Niagara Falls, so that’s why we chose that route.)

Mom, Old What’s Her Face, and my daughter are encouraging me to visit Salem while I’m back there, and I have a hunch it will happen.

This means, I have to work next week, then we’re out of here. I might wind up doing a few quick posts from the road, or I might save it all for when I get home, but I’ll share some things here when I can.

There are mixed emotions for sure. The East Coast is a long way from Idaho, and we’re not exactly made of money as far as visiting every year. I’m excited for them to begin their lives, and am honestly looking forward to the trip.

Watching the weather with some trepidation, but we’re both good winter drivers. The biggest obstacle might be whether the highway through Yellowstone is open or not. It really is the best route and not chosen specifically for the park. If we have to go around it will be a bummer and add a lot of miles.

A little writing

It’s nothing earth shattering, but it all counts. I’ve managed around 5400 words in the last two days. I took this week off, mostly because I deserve it.

We didn’t do much of anything during the holiday other than watch the prequels to Yellowstone. I never had much interest in the main series, but Sam Elliot and Harrison Ford have some draw for me. These were good, and I’ll try to keep up with the Ford/Mirin version as the new episodes drop.

Old What’s Her Face returned to work yesterday, so I cracked open my manuscript. I only have Mari’s swamp story going right now and need another one to balance things out. I decided not to start something else until I finish this one.

Most of those new words came today. I’d stopped at a tough point to get going again, but muscled through it yesterday. Today I had one difficult trial for Mari to get through, but it blossomed into so much more that I had to keep going.

She wound up closing the gap on the men she’s following, but got trapped on a crumbling bridge at night. No food, no water, and no grazing for her animals. The bridge isn’t trustworthy in daylight, so it’s deadly at night.

For whatever reason, she took some injuries and I left her trying to heal up where the animals could drink and feed. I think it turned out to be a pretty decent section.

With holiday leave included, I don’t have to return to the office until next Tuesday. I might even be able to finish Mari’s story, but am not counting on that. This one needs a bigger denouement than some of my others and I’m not going to rush just to get done.

At some point, I’m going to have to do some serious editing. I have the Space Chimp story, one for Lizzie and the hat, and Mari’s story that will need some attention.

This needs to get done, so that will be my task after I finish this draft.

I’m finding some neat things to include using Google Maps. This is a post apocalyptic tale, so ruins of those places can make it into my stories. I had her stop at the Stennis Space Center, but need to flesh it out a bit more.

There is a cool dinosaur park just ahead of her. The kind with a trail that has Dino-statues in the forest. It isn’t a day away from where she is so I might have to miss that one. Her mission won’t allow her to slow down and goof off without a good reason. She would pass it around noon and wouldn’t normally stop. Including it might feel kind of forced. I know of one thing that might work to include it, but need to sleep on that.

I’ll get back to the manhunt tomorrow.

This! Was my vacation day??

This was one of those rare opportunities that shows up occasionally. If I take one day off, I could garner four days in a row. Tomorrow is a holiday and it all just fell together.

My plan was to catch up with both of my manuscripts, then add new words. I read through my Hat project over the weekend, so that left my post apocalyptic story.

I spent the morning getting familiar with it once more. I left it at an interesting place, so I figured I might add some new words.

When Old What’s Her Face got off work, she wanted me to go pick up the dog’s meds. She said, “You can get your hair cut while you’re out.”

This really wasn’t my plan, and the vet is a forty-mile round trip from the house. I may have huffed a bit.

She said, “You can do it all tomorrow. Otto isn’t completely out of pills.”

That was enough for me. Rather than lose full momentum for two days, I loaded up and went to town. One bit of good news came from the trip. Turns out the vet made an arrangement with Costco now. They can call the meds in there for us. (Massive volume buying power.)

It’s about fifteen minutes from the house, and their price is 50% off. Doesn’t help this time, but will help in the future. It’s even on my route home from work. Since I was out anyway, I stopped an got my hair cut.

There’s a fairly good chance that I’ll have Mari digging up a fresh grave before bed time tonight. If not, she’ll be doing it in the morning.

Today wasn’t perfect, but those things needed to get done, too. It isn’t like I’m getting George R.R. Martin level hate mail to hurry up and get my next book out there.

Here’s to tomorrow! New words for sure. That’s what I enjoy the most, and it’s going to happen.

Vacation time trickles out…

I have everything I need to publish Serang today, but I procrastinated. People aren’t hurting for something fresh from me, so I have time.

• Side note, still time to read Viral Blues for Halloween.

I’d like to publish this before the year runs out, and next weekend is a fair option. I need to devote some time to the blurb for this one. Because it’s a supporting story for Lanternfish, it takes place in a mildly fantasy setting. It isn’t quite as big as Lanternfish, but there is a dragon of sorts, (Maybe two or three depending on how you count) and I don’t want to mislead anyone.

Serang is a coming of age tale, so I need to communicate that. It takes place in a time of great political upheaval, so that has to get in there. I don’t want people to be upset because there are fantasy elements, or disappointed that it isn’t epic fantasy. A bit more thought might help when writing this blurb. By next weekend I might have it all sorted out.

What did I do with my spare time? I spent some time supporting the Something Wicked blog tour, along with some of my older posts. Today there is a blog push from the paid promo I did, and I already saw one sale from that. Fingers crossed for more.

I’ve also been staying up late for the World Series. So far the home team hasn’t won a single game. That’s never happened before, and it’s been a great series. Game seven is tonight, so I’ll be tired at work tomorrow. A nap seems like a good idea so I’m not too flat in the morning.

We had a chore day, so we got the camper put away for winter, and managed a date night out of the deal. Halloween is the only beer tour I participate in these days, and got my glow in the dark tee-shirt. I’m wearing it right now.

I spent a couple of days adding thousands of words to my side project. This one is a cyberpunk tale set in a futuristic version of San Francisco. It challenged me to use science fiction to exaggerate some issues we see in current society, and it challenged my world-building skills, too.

I’m very happy with a piece I wrote yesterday that went down during the Chinese New Year parade. A cyberpunk version of that parade. If the stars align, I can publish it on actual Chinese New Year for a bit of extra luck. I’m year of the rat, next year is rat. Maybe I’m due for some luck. There are rats in the story…

The story is called Grinders, and I’m at 71,000 words right now. Getting it done this year shouldn’t be too tough, and if I can afford the artwork, publishing on Chinese New Year seems realistic.

I didn’t do anything particularly exciting, and it felt great. I did what I wanted, when I wanted to do it. I was mildly productive and I wasn’t at the office. Sometimes it’s good to have a break from the workaday world, and that’s what I did.

Hope everyone has a Happy Halloween, and finds a way to take a small break on occasion.

Saturday checking in

Things have been pretty crazy around here. I (nearly) finished up my blog tour for Viral Blues this week. The big climax was the Something Wicked tour with all my Story Empire friends. I like to reblog my appearances in hopes of sending the host a bit of traffic. For that leg of the tour, I had my own guest that day and could not post over the top of them. They deserved the spotlight, and brought us some wonderful options for Halloween reading.

I say almost finished, because I have one interview that will post on Halloween. It promises to be a good interview, and I’ll share it here. Then, that’s it for Viral Blues. I’ll watch for reviews, and if they’re on BookBub I can tweet them out. BookBub is starting to warm on me. I need more followers there, and am willing to follow back.

This is where I come to a rift between heart and head. My heart wants to return to drafting of new material. I still have two projects in the works, and one of them is near conclusion. I also have some fun ideas for the Lanternfish sequel, but it is lagging a bit behind. I may have a little maneuvering room here this coming week.

My head is telling me to release Serang. This one is a supporting story to Lanternfish, and not part of the main trilogy. I made big strides toward publishing today, and expect to publish it next week.

This may actually be a cover reveal. I don’t recall sharing the image before. With Serang, I’ll need to do a bit of promotion. I’ll do a blog tour, but I don’t think it will be as extensive. I only have two specific pieces of Lisa Burton art, plus I can recycle the one from Lanternfish. I haven’t even started writing posts yet, so that’s going to eat into my time.

I have my concerns about this story, but I freak out about all my releases. Lanternfish had comedy bits, and they were well received. Serang was one of the more serious pirates, and her origin story will be serious, too. (Sorry to disappoint those comedy fans.) I have some neat settings and situations in the story, so we’ll all find out together. The few coming-of-age stories I’ve written were well received, so fingers crossed. A lot of things about Serang are explained in this story.

My wiggle room is in the form of vacation, paid vacation. I’m getting paid to be an author. (Don’t laugh, I’m counting it as a win.) I don’t have to return to work until Halloween. Old What’s Her Face is out of town for a couple of days, and that helps, too.

I’ll spend the next few days dabbling with blurb ideas, maybe cobble together some promotional posts. I’ll check my list of potential hosts, and see who I haven’t put the touch on lately. I really have no idea who I’m going to ask.

I may even pull up that nearly finished draft and add a chapter to it. It’s science fiction, so it won’t tangle with any fantasy ideas I’m working on.

No matter what, I’m breaking for the World Series. I still have a few remaining pumpkin beers and can’t be expected to work all the time. I don’t have a favorite team, and nobody this year has me cheering against them either. So far the games have been great, and I hope they continue on that path.

Let me hear from you. Are you watching the Series? Do you have a favorite team? Am I crazy for releasing another book on the heels of Viral Blues? Do you like or hate the cover? Are you sick of all this book promo?

Checking in for the weekend

I had a houseful of company this weekend. It’s just easier to step back and spend family time, than step away from them to keep this place updated.

I usually try to blog around three times per week, more occasionally. With the Viral Blues tour going on, it was pretty simple to reblog wherever I was and keep some original content available.

It occurred to me it might be easier to appear less places per week and spread the tour out. Prior to this release, I crammed about a dozen or more appearances into a ten day period, then went crazy trying to keep up with all of them. Spreading it all out didn’t make it any easier. You try stuff and you learn. It was worth a shot.

If nothing else, it could be more productive, since I’m targeting the Halloween season this time. Maybe there’s someone out there who hasn’t started looking for a story yet. Not everyone gets into Halloween for a long as I do.

All of my posts are original material, so following me around isn’t too boring. By now, my regulars all know about my book. You’ve either gotten a copy, or decided it wasn’t for you. The purpose of touring is to reach a larger audience. My hosts have regulars I haven’t met, or only know peripherally. Maybe one of them will take a chance on me, that’s kind of the theory.

The good news is all the reblogging is about to stop. (Hears a small cheer spread across the blogosphere.) This is because I’m also participating in the Something Wicked tour with my partners over at Story Empire. We’re all taking our show on the road to promote a few suitable Halloween titles. This means I’ll be hosting someone every day next week. My appearances will be on their blogs, but I won’t post over the top of my guests. Here is the Something Wicked tour schedule if you want to check in on any of us.

At Story Empire we try to bring our fellow authors valuable content. Sometimes it involves story craft, others it’s about promotion, all kinds of topics. We’re all authors, too, and we have to promote our own wares occasionally. I hope you guys take advantage of this to meet some outstanding authors, maybe find a new blog to follow, or even just spread the word. I’ll do my best to keep up with the ones I wrote and answer questions, or participate in the comments.

In other news, I have a full work-week ahead of me, then I’m burning some leave time. My goal is to get Serang off to the formatter, then prepare some posts to tour her story around. I’ll have to identify a few hosts and put the touch on them for Serang.

I’m probably crazy for scheduling them so close together, but I don’t see a lot of options. At least my schedule will be clear for whatever comes next.

As far as what comes next, I’d love to get back to HMS Lanternfish. I glanced at it briefly, and don’t even remember some of what I’ve written. Before I take it up again, I’ll have to read it from the beginning to get back into it. That’s one of the bad things about long breaks. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone on this. Promo has to happen, and the break was necessary.

It was a nice family weekend, we had some great seafood one night, and had a good visit. I don’t mind losing some time for that. Hope all of you had wonderful weekends, too.

Vacation ends

Time to go back to the office tomorrow. I’m regretting not taking the next two days off, but I hate being behind at work, too. My staff has been working, and I’m sure there is a pile awaiting me.

Vacation was filled with obstacles, but I did the best I could. I never did look into promotional blog posts and should have. I don’t need any of them until September, but I like to work ahead. Blogging isn’t like drafting new work, and I could create one every evening if need be.

One of those obstacles was my yardwork, but that is all finished and I’m still married. The peaches are about gone, and they’ll be missed until next year.

My word goal was plucked out of thin air, based upon what I’m capable of. The problem with those kind of projections is assuming there won’t be interruptions. I failed to hit 20K, but I did hit 10,400. Total is at 17. 4 K, so it was a productive vacation.

I month ago, I went on the hunt for a New Orleans phone book to help with character and place names. I’ve never been able to score one. I like this area because of the “melting pot” that city offers. I know not many have land lines, but I don’t want to call them anyway. I only want to browse through names for my fiction.

I failed on NOLA, but I did score this one:

I don’t see why Baton Rouge isn’t just as good, and I put it to good use today. Lanternfish needed some new characters, and this helped me come up with some decent names.

I also worked up a raft of deadly dangerous sea creatures. These are based upon the real world Portuguese Man of War, but they’re a bit different in my fantasy world.

I had to leave Lanternfish at sea, but they are approaching a nearby port in hopes of finding one of two people who can serve as sailing master.

My next flex day is Monday, so I should score some writing time this weekend. After that, it may be two weeks before I can tackle it again.

Small updates

I still have tool problems, but those are all solved tonight. This is my way of saying I’ll have to finish my tree pruning tomorrow. At least everything is in order now, and I should make short work of the remainder. Even have a fresh saw blade now.

I spent some serious time with the Lanternfish project. Beginnings are always tough, and this one is tougher because it’s the second book in a trilogy. In reality, it takes time to stock a ship and man her. In fiction, I could just glance off that and set sail. I think a better option for me is to merge some of this. It comes across a bit more realistically, but they’ll get moving in a better time frame.

To keep things interesting, there are some root monster antics. While the pirates are making ready, the monsters have some assignments to deal with. This is going to force me to tone them down for a spell later on. I believe the little guys are better in small doses. It’s the “leave ’em wanting more” theory in action.

As soon as we hit the open sea, I have a fantasy creature I’m going to weave in. This will also serve as a bit of foreshadowing, so bonus there. There is also going to be an enemy waiting for them, so I can get right to some adventure after taking time to get underway.

It came in at about 3500 words today. Since there were no new words yesterday, I’m behind on my target of 20,000 words during my vacation.

I also read that book I’ve been getting to. I gave The Scout: Dark Crossings, by D. L. Cross five stars. D. L. Cross is actually Staci Troilo. This is a short story that stands alone in her Invasion series. I’ve read the first novel too, and loved it.

My suggestion is to read The Scout. It only takes a half-hour or so, and I think you’ll like it. If you like it, there is a whole series in this setting. I’ll be reading the whole thing.

Tomorrow is the day I call my parents, so some of my morning will be dedicated to that. Pruning trees will fit in well with that timetable. I don’t know if I can check in with Lanternfish, but it could happen.

I always want more, but my task-list is getting checked off a bit here and there.