July update and NEW BOOK!

Okay, so only about 1/10th of the content of this book is actually my writing, but I’m still very proud of this new book. It’s an anthology of stories from authors I’ve been privileged to publish over the years, and every story in it is fantastic. It even includes one from me about Liam from the Sisters of Chaos trilogy, and a story from J. R. Dwornik about Lyle from the same series. So please check it out!

Now, on to my terribly delayed monthly update for June.

So, clearly I still fell well short of my monthly goal of 20,000 words, but I did far better than in May, and at least achieved half of my goal. The problem, obviously, is that I simply didn’t write for many days. I rarely allow myself to fall short of my daily word count goal when I actually sit down to write, I just too often don’t end up trying. To be perfectly honest, usually it’s simply because I don’t feel like it/don’t want to write.

Most of that comes from the fact that I’m feeling dissatisfied with the story. I know it can, and will, get better, but I suppose it’s been so long since I really did any heavy writing that I’m getting discouraged a lot easier when what I write doesn’t immediately come out worthy. Mainly I continue to write new scenes that end up as large blocks of exposition. I will improve on them, I just need to get past my own perfectionism and blank page syndrome to simply advance the story.

I should have a 120,000-word manuscript written by the end of this month, but at present I’m only clocking in a hair under 70k. But hey, 70,000 words is a pretty decent book on its own, and it’s still 70,000 words more than I had at the beginning of the year. I need to focus on that more than how much I still have left to do, and just write.

Beyond writing, I haven’t done much of note recently. Stress/overall emotional state has largely reduced my extracurricular activities to reading and another play-through of Trials of Mana. I have only a few books left in my TBR pile, though I’ve had occasional diversions with books from daughter’s collection or library acquisitions, and have added a couple as well. I’m looking forward to having an excuse to dive into the many ebooks I’ve collected over the years.

Of course, being halfway through the month, my course has already been pretty much set, and so far my writing hasn’t progressed much better in July than it went in June.

But there’s still time to improve that.

Some changes around here

Finally overcoming my procrastination, I’ve updated this website in ways that should have been done shortly after reappropriating my old domain name for my publishing business. The “portfolio” section has been separated into shorts, art, and photography, each of which has been populated with all the examples of each I am not ashamed to show off at this point. (Hint: my art collection has been severely trimmed down.)

Also as notably, I’ve added a “connect with me” widget to the side bar with links to the various forms of social media and instant messaging I use, including my new Facebook page, Goodreads author page, and About the Author page on Amazon. Please feel free to add/follow/talk to me on any of those.

I still have an enormous backlog of photos to go through in search of more to share, as well as possibly one more section to add. But, one step at a time.