Hard at Work

Hello everyone. I know I've been MIA once again, but rest assure I've been working my tail off.

The *new day job has been keeping me quite busy in all the un-fun, non-writerly ways that day jobs do. But I'm not giving up on writing. I'm working on the second book in my Perpetual Creatures series, titled Beauty & Power, and will be sending it off to the editor real soon. I hope to have it out around the first of the year, then I'll start writing book 3.

I would love to be able to pump out a new book every three months, but to do that I'd have to write by day and do all the editing/marketing at night. I'm not quite there yet. I still need the day job to keep the wolves away. That being said, I'm shooting to have book 3 out sometime late spring/early summer.

We'll see how that works out.

In the mean time, I'm running another Kindle Countdown Promotion for my short story collection Contemplations of Dinner. It'll be on sale for $0.99 from now until December 21st. Have at it, and don't forget to spread the word.

Thanks.



*I've been there almost a year, so "new" is a relative term.

Drumroll Please!

After WAY too long of a time between books, I'm happy to announce that I have hit the publish button on my latest novel.

HEART OF THE DEAD is book one in my Perpetual Creatures Series.

Jerusa Phoenix never thought she would experience anything more shocking than being able to see ghosts. Then she met Silvanus. The young man with unearthly eyes, who seems to be able to read her thoughts, is handsome, powerful, and she is sure of one thing: he isn’t human.

But Silvanus isn’t the only mysterious creature to come to town.

Jerusa, ignoring the warnings of her ghost companion, Alicia, finds herself face to face with a group of vampires. Silvanus tries to save Jerusa, but she is wounded in the battle. Silvanus kills one of the vampires, but to all their horror, he rises again to become something far worse . . . a mindless flesh-eater known as a savage.

Jerusa is transformed into a vampire to save her life. Silvanus is poisoned by savage blood and when he vanishes before their eyes, Jerusa realizes something else. Silvanus isn’t a vampire, either.

Jerusa, along with the ghost Alicia, must join with the other blood-drinkers to hunt down and destroy the savage before he can make other savages, proving that she is worthy to be a vampire. As she embarks on this dangerous mission, she can’t help thinking of Silvanus. Where is he? Who is he? What is he? 

HEART OF THE DEAD is available for pre-order on Amazon and will go live on September 16th. 

Predatory Animals $0.99 Countdown Extravaganza!

From now until September 15th you can get PREDATORY ANIMALS for just 99 cents.

In the town of Shadeland, people are vanishing.

The Pummels, a most beloved family and benefactor to the exotic cat rescue center, are guarding a secret--one they will kill to keep quiet. Stranger still, retired Marine Casper Brown suffers a near-death accident that gives him a deep connection to three stray dogs while filling his nights with dreams of unearthly creatures.

Something is hunting the townspeople of Shadeland and nothing in Casper's training can prepare him for what he finds lurking in the shadows.

 

You can pick up PREDATORY ANIMALS here. And if you are so inclined, sign up for my New Release Newsletter. It should be at the top right. I promise no spam, either of the email type or the weird canned meat. I will be releasing my next titled any day now, so you don't want to miss out.

Exclusive

I have decided to take my stories and go all in with Amazon.* I know many of you will tell me what an unwise decision that is, and you may be right. But the thing is, in three years I haven't earned squat on all of the other retailers combined.

It may be a failed experiment, then again, maybe not.

I'm working toward publishing book one in a new series. I'm just waiting on the cover art to come back. But then I went and did something stupid, like read this blog post by Hugh Howey, and now I'm wondering if I should wait until I have the others ready to go.

So many tough decisions. It is true that the easiest part of self publishing is writing the books.

What to do?

*If you wish to read any of my stories and you don't want to go through Amazon, please email me and I will do my best to get you the story.

The Only Thing Constant Is Change

I can't believe that I haven't written a post since January.

Granted, my purpose for this blog has changed over the years. When I first started, it was understood that if you wanted to gain the attention of an agent then you needed a strong web presence with a ready-made following.

Now that that myth has been debunked, I use this blog just to drain some of my random thoughts.

What have I been up to since January?

Much and more.

I lost my job. Well, that's being a bit dramatic. The job I had, which I worked between the hours of 6am and 2:30pm, was switched against my will to one that was between 10pm and 6:30am.

I liked this job. It was easy, had very little stress and gave me ample downtime that I used to sneak in some writing. I was very blessed to land another job before the shift change. This new job is a very good job. A much higher rate of pay, still during daylight hours, good benefits. Downside is no idle time to write. Not complaining, just explaining.

I had to learn how to write at night again. You know, those hours when everyone else in the house is asleep and you wish you were too.

I've been working on a new series. I had planned to write one, publish it then move on to the next one.

That didn't happen.

Instead, once I finished book 1 I couldn't help but start writing book 2 immediately after. The job change came in the middle of all this and I found that I didn't have time to write the second while editing the first.

Just last night I finished the first draft of book number 2 and while I'm tempted to start on number 3, I am going to pull back and get some editing and publishing done first.

If any of you out there would like to know when book number 1 (I will reveal the title soon) comes out, I invite you to click on the link to the right and join my mailing list. I promise no spam, sharing of email addresses, or annoying updates every 15 minutes.

Old Man Winter Can Stick It

Hello everyone. I hope you are all warm and dry as we endure this latest Snowpocalypse. If you happen to be somewhere tropical then I hate you. Just kidding. But I'm not. I really hate you.

Here in southern IN it keeps switching between rain and snow. My yard has turned into the most drab giant Slurpee you've ever seen. As I listen to the water dripping down my broken chimney and tap on top of my vent-less gas fireplace, soaking the army of towels I have piled beneath the leak, I truly wish I would have faced my acrophobia this past summer, climbed up on my roof and put a tarp over the dang thing.

They (whoever they are) are forecasting this rain/sleet junk will switch over to snow here in about an hour and that we will have -30 windchill factors to look forward to. Oh, rapture! School has already been canceled in this area which means I'm probably not going in to work tomorrow, which means they won't pay me (go figure) which means less money to put towards fixing that giant, gaping hole in my chimney.

Sorry. I didn't mean to wax all glass-half-empty on you. Winter sometimes does that to me. I wasn't built for the cold and if I didn't have such deep roots in this town me and Mrs. B would load up the kids and head south. Maybe hit up Georgia for some zombie hunting.

Anyway, as I mentioned last post I've been having some Day Job issues. Weather permitting, I have a pretty important job interview on Tuesday. Any well wishes, good thoughts, crossed fingers and prayers are appreciated.

I would that my book sales were enough to cancel out the necessity of a day job, but alas it has not yet come to that. I'm still pressing onward, though. I have 70,000 words down in book 2 (the continuance of the book 1 I will be putting out soon) and I hope to finish it within the month. I was hoping to just keep on typing, but with the way my schedule is changing I think I may have to postpone writing book number 3 until I get number 1 published and number 2 fixed up a bit.

Everyone confused? Good. That's the way I like it.

If you're somewhere being tormented by Old Man Winter, give him the finger, stay inside with a your robe and slippers on and curl up with a good story. If you're somewhere tropical . . . go inside for a bit. Too much
sun is bad for you.