I continue to make small triumphs! Someone is reading my first novel The Quietest Heart, at least sixty-eight pages worth of it. It’s not my best work to be honest, but I am not going to remove it because I think it’s important to show the evolution of the writer – much like Howard Tayler leaves his early drafts of Schlock Mercenary up when his artwork has improved greatly over the years. I also recommend the webcomic. The artwork is good towards the end and the story is funny and engaging.

Still working on Valentina’s Repast, but my mind is starting to wander to other things. This is a problem with me. I’ll start working on something, but eventually, some shiny new bauble will spring up in my mind, so I’ll get disinterested in what I was working on to chase this new butterfly. Lather, rinse, repeat. I don’t know how I was able to get Valentina’s Feast finished under these conditions. Also, given that I need to have Repast done and out by Hallowe’en this year…I can’t really afford many diversions. How do professional writers stay on task? They must be made of sterner stuff than I am, to be honest. I’ll have to figure out some way to appease this distracting beast. I know I’ve made a habit of writing down ideas for future use, but my mind seems to take that as a hint to not focus on the task at hand. Can coffee make you focus? Should I be drinking more coffee? The answer is yes. The answer is always yes.

Another distraction is July, which seems both so far away and frightfully up close. I’m going to take a vacation on the beach and currently I’m saving up for a nice hotel room. This has made apparently a bit of a panic at Goulet Pens, because they are blowing up my inbox. I think they think I’m dead. They’re sending me emails with enticing pens, but I must stay the course. The running theme of their missives is: “Hey, buddy – how are you doing? We haven’t heard from you in a while. Everything okay? Well, we got this beautiful Visconti Homo Sapiens Magma pen…made from real magma from Mt. Etna. It was $995, but for you, we’ll knock it down to $719. Buddy, that’s a steal! We might as well put them in cereal boxes for that price.” Soon…soon my pretty, you and I will be joined. Let me pay for this hotel room and raise some cash for gas and food. I promise, my love and light – we’ll be together. That’s going to be a birthday present for me (unless someone who reads this blog wants to buy it for me? Yes, I am a shameless pen whore).

I think that’s going to be all for now. I’m going to try to finish up this scene with Valentina back in the kitchen of one of her restaurants and lull myself to sleep with visions of my writing my name with a pen that’s more than a mortgage payment (don’t judge me). I hope everyone has a good day.

My streak continues! I’ve sold one book in February, so I have sold at least one book since November. This may not sound like a whole lot (I would much rather sell one hundred a month than one, but hey – small steps!), but it means there’s something to my writing skill. Maybe not my marketing skills, but the writing skills are apparently good enough.

Valentina’s Repast continues with another murder and now I’m beginning the romance part of it. I’m excited about this part just because I’m setting up the second act now, and I can really start ramping things up. Sure, Valentina is racking up bodies, but now she’s going to try not killing Cady. I can’t wait to see what happens.

There’s not much else going on – just trying to get this novel done and waiting for a good movie to come out. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comment section. Death on the Nile looks good, but that’s it. I might wait for it to come out on iTunes and buy it.  The only movie I’m really, really looking forward to is Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. I love Marvel Cinematic Universe’s consistency across the various media. Nothing happens in a vacuum with this property. Speaking of which, I need to finish up Hawkeye.

I hope everyone else is doing well, please take a moment to check out the book links on the right – both mine and dear friends who are far better writers than I am. There’s also a ko-fi link so you can help to keep me awake and writing. Have good day!

I’m stuck again on Chapter Eight. She’s met the other female protagonist in Cady, but after that…? I don’t know if I should show her working, and then end the chapter with her killing, or should I just focus on her deteriorating sanity? Well – should I focus on her sanity above everything else? Don’t mind me, I’m just trying to spitball here. While the plot of the novel is her trying to balance out her need to eat people with being a lover. She failed with Greg, and now she’s trying to forestall it with Cady.

Of course, while I’m trying to figure out the rest of the book, I’m trying to watch the Olympic Games and frankly Hulu is screwing it up. I don’t know if it’s Hulu’s fault, or NBC trying to herd people to their service, but I’m not happy. I tried to record the Canada vs. US women’s hockey game, but I think instead I got ice dancing. I’m hoping that it was just that the game was shorter than the time I recorded, but if I didn’t – I’m quitting. I’m not watching as much coverage that I normally do because all the sports II want to see are elsewhere on NBC’s galaxy of channels and I can’t get some of them through Hulu. Bah. I might end up watching Canadian feed through TunnelBear.

I am writing this blog entry off of my spiffy new laptop and it’s working better than my PC and my older laptop…which I should fix at some point Sunday. Saturday, I have a marathon day: writer’s group in the morning and gaming group in the afternoon. I don’t think I’ll be home until late night, but I will be very happy. As exhausting as they are, I like days like this where I’m just doing two things I love intently: gaming and writing. It’s a shame that I must cut short the writing to get to the game, but it’s going to take me about an hour to get to the house where the games take place. I should gas up the car, definitely.

Is there anything else going on? Not really – just trying to get this novel finished before my deadline, then charging off to another book (don’t know if I’m going to do ‘Dirt Elf’ or ‘Romance with Advantage’). At some point, I need to fix the old laptop and use that for at home writing in the morning. Fixing it is not going to be hard. I just need to swap out some RAM chipsets. I got the new laptop just to be a gaming laptop, but now it’s a replacement PC.

That’s all really…other than my grocery store finally came through with bottles of Pepsi Max! I got four six packs because I certainly have no problems with addiction to caffeine. Nope. Not me. I can quit whenever. Pepsi, coffee, energy drinks – I can walk away. I’m sweating and shaking because it’s cold outside and I over-dressed. Really. Don’t judge me.

I tried extending my good fortune with using Amazon ads and I got nothing for a week. I don’t know if it’s Amazon enticing me with success or just my bad luck. So, what I am going to do is double down with both Facebook and Amazon to at least get my name out there. It seems illogical to throw out good money after bad, but I am running into the problem of being ‘the best author you’ve never heard of’. So, I’ll get my name out there one way or the other.

I got my spiffy new laptop and I think it is going to be the one I work from when I am at my day job. It has a functioning network card and I loaded a freeware office suite on it so I can write, as well as Scrivener so I can continue my work. I feel a lot faster typing on this than I did my iPad. I don’t know why that is – maybe I need the tactile thumping of the keys rather than tippy-tapping on a screen. I will use the iPad, but more that likely that’s going to be for when I am away from the house on vacation. My older laptop will be more like me – a homebody with poor networking skills. Thanks to a good friend of mine, I got the RAM chips needed to fix it, so (hopefully) no more BSOD issues. I just wish I could fix the card.

Valentina’s Repast is slogging along. I left her dancing with Cady and having another bloody daydream. I need to get back on the stick with this thing and I’m hoping the new laptop can take care of that. Really, the only thing that holds me back at work is being able to update the files on the network. I am going to dedicate today to getting those two out of the bar and into an intimate situation to see how things turn out. Maybe this will fuel another murder? Who knows? I just need to see how long meat keeps in a freezer.

Well, that’s all for now. Thank you for reading and check out the books on your right – including Valentina’s Feast, the first book in the series. Hope you all have a good day. Cheers.