Category Archives: A Wizard’s Work

There will be new books

First, short story time.

I’ve been working through some mental bullshit. Some of you know that. I may or may not have been clear about it on the blog in the past. It is what it is.

Artistic work, being what it is, relies on being able to clear away that mental bullshit (or harness it) for that time period in which you’re creating. You have to be able to lose yourself in what you’re doing, especially if you’re writing. If you can’t lose yourself in the story your creating, and you allow your real life to intrude, it becomes harder and harder to make progress.

These are my word counts for the past six years. Read ’em and weep.

2012: 256k
2013: 199k
2014: 51k
2015: 49k
2016: 39k
2017: 32k
2018: 16k

Can you guess what happened? The voice of a person close to me took up residence in my head, and once it was there, I couldn’t get it out. Fear made the voice stronger and stronger until it choked me.

This person never intended this to happen to me. They never actually said the things that echoed within the confines of my skull. But I let them in, magnified them, and they became my own personal writing hell to the point where I was wondering if I was a writer anymore, or even if I wanted to be.

I’ve been on the cusp of solving this problem for a couple months, now. I could feel it. It was palpable. I just didn’t know exactly when.

Until this past Monday.

An event occurred, something that was a bit stressful, but generally not earth shattering. I’m keeping the details private, because the person involved may not want them public, but it set things in motion inside me. It was the push I needed.

The unwanted voice in my head that I couldn’t get rid of? It’s gone. The fear and stress associated with it? Gone. I wrote 1100 words on Tuesday, 2600 words on Wednesday, 3200 words on Thursday, 3100 words on Friday, and 1400 words on a fairly hectic Saturday. More than eleven thousand words this week. Compare that to all of 2018. The 3200 words on Thursday? They were the most words I’d written in a single day in three and a half years, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s writing.

All because I was able to exorcise a voice from my head that I’d magnified into a mammoth, frightening demon that was sucking the life out of me.

Don’t let negative voices into your head. Ignore people who have opinions about your work or about what you should be doing, especially if they choose to share them with you without your asking. Even if they are close to you. Especially if they are close to you. Your art and well-being are more important than their uninformed opinions.

Now, story time is over. On to the part of this post that sort of resembles the title.

I’m working on a new fantasy series, tentatively titled Sorcerer’s Bane. The first book is done (it was done over a year ago). The second book will hit the half-way mark on Monday or Tuesday, and there will be at least three more after that. The release date of the first book is tentatively scheduled for the end of April. Pre-orders for the other titles in the series may become available at that time, but the plans for that are subject to change.

Following Sorcerer’s Bane, I’ll be writing a few more Grim Repo novels. These will likely be about 20% longer than Parted Out, and like Sorcerer’s Bane, will come out one after the other until the story arc is finished.

And then, following the Grim Repo books, I’m finally going to finish A Wizard’s Work. The reason I’m putting off until later is that both the Sorcerer’s Bane books and the Grim Repo books are much shorter than the AWW books will be, and I want to be sure I’m in a good writing rhythm before tackling them.

I may sprinkle in some other short projects here and there, but for the most part I will be focusing on these three series for the next year to year and a half.

If it sounds like a lot, it is a lot. It sounds daunting, to be honest, when I write it all out, but like they say, you eat an elephant one bite at a time.

And you write series one book at a time. I’m going to have one hell of a good time.

October Update

September turned out all right, I guess. It was actually kind of a difficult month, as I managed to run into a curb with one of our cars, and it’s been out of commission because we can’t currently afford to get it fixed. It meant that all of the events my son needs to go to require a lot of planning to make happen (as well as help from some of his friends on occasion).

I did get that TrackerBox update out, but I couldn’t make the Mac TrackerBox Kickstarter happen. I’m hoping to submit it for approval tomorrow, though (they say it takes three days). If it all works out, it should be up and going early next week. I’ll do a bunch of tweets and facebook posts surrounding it, as well as a post here, so don’t worry that you’ll miss it.

I’ve added features for the next big StoryBox update. The wordcount calendar is now in a real calendar, and the word usage data is now in a sortable grid. I’ve added a Bookshelf feature that can show all of your stories from all of your projects in a single view with cover thumbnails and status info. I’m in the middle of adding custom document properties for each document. For Characters, Items, and Locations, these will allow you to replace the text document Q&A with a set of fields that you can fill in. Some of these fields will let you draw links between documents or characters (think friends, family, etc….). I don’t have a target date for the next StoryBox release, but I can say that it is probably a few months away, still.

On the writing front, I finished up a superhero novella for an anthology/bundle I’ve been invited to. If I didn’t miss the mark, that should be available in November. I immediately started working on the follow-up to it, which, if all goes well, will be available in December. When I finish that, I’m planning a third that should be ready in January. After that, more Grim Repo.

I’m really going to push to complete series over the next year and a half. I think one of the primary things holding me back is how wide I let my focus get. I wrote Shattered, then followed it up with Questioner’s Shadow (the first book in another series) instead of with Fragments. Then I wrote Moony, and maybe a couple other things before finally getting back to Fragments. And then I wrote more things.

Frankly, as a reader, I’d hate that.

So the plan is to tighten up the loop. I’ll finish this novella series, then finish up Grim Repo, then a Sword & Sorcery series I’ve started (and not yet published), and then I’ll tackle the remaining Wizard’s Work books. I’m getting excited just thinking about it. Big plans, big plans. However long they take me, they’ll get done, and in that order.

What’s Going On?

I haven’t posted much here in a long time. It’s challenging when nothing seems to be happening, when writing isn’t going well, to talk as if things are okay. It’s been a challenging year (yes, another one), and I just find that I don’t want to speak publicly about it. It’s hard to feel, sometimes, like anyone cares. I know people do, I know you’re out there, but knowing doesn’t really alter my perceptions.

But it’s time to climb out of the hole, take a peek outside, and see what the lay of the land looks like, now that spring seems like it might finally arrive (the rain this year has been relentless).

So, here’s what’s going on.

I’ll be running a Kickstarter for the Mac version of TrackerBox in the near near future. If you have been waiting for a Mac version of TrackerBox, this is the only way it’s going to happen. I’ll post more when it goes live.

I have been writing, but I’ve been writing songs. You can hear demos of some of them on SoundCloud. They’re all kind of rough, but you should get the idea of what I’m aiming for. And when I say they’re rough, each of them were written and recorded in a single day. The plan is to write a few more, then do some work on the demos, and record an album.

I’m still working on the multiplayer part of the game Paperback, which you can find on iOS and Android. It’s a great word/card game. That should be done soon (I’m timing the TrackerBox Kickstarter around when I think that will be done).

Do not worry, more books will be coming. I can’t leave Robert and company, Grim, or the other the crew from Minders alone for too much longer.

If you’re still listening, thanks for hanging around in my absence. I’m going to try to be better about posting regularly.

Pondering Bloodweave and Its Consequences

It’s in the low ’70s outside right now, sunny, and feels warmer than that. I’m barbecuing hot dogs for lunch, and I’ve spent much of the morning pondering the question, “What next?”.

You’re probably wondering why I’m even asking the question, seeing as how the last post said “more posts”, and this is the first one since then, nearly half a year later.

But I’m asking the question, because it’s time to get back to writing. It’ll probably be a slow start as I feel my way forward, but I fully intend to be back to a normal (for me) pace by the end of the year.

In order to do that, though, I need a book to write. Among my options are a third Grim Repo book, a sequel to Minders, and finishing up BloodweaveBloodweave is the most challenging of the three. The Grim Repo books are fun to write, and they’re shortish. A sequel to Minders would also be a bunch of fun, and still not terribly long (not like an epic fantasy novel). Bloodweave, though, has some issues.

The first issue is that it already has (despite what the counter on the page says – I should have updated it) 62k words written, which would mean I’d have to pick it up in the middle, and that’s always been difficult for me. The second issue is that it’s been a very long time since I wrote most of those 62k words, and I’m not entirely certain I could match them in feel and style. The first of those words was penned on April 12th, 2013 – more than two years ago. The third issue is that I’ve learned quite a bit since I started writing it. I wrote another novel called October in between then and now, and my life has been a mess of things that has changed my perspective in many ways. I’m not the same person that wrote those early words. The fourth issue is that there was a reason I bogged down, and I think it’s because I was trying to force too many things to happen. I wasn’t letting the characters speak for themselves.

For those reasons, I’m thinking about tossing those 62k words into the waste bin, and starting fresh. Same initial starting point, but after that, it will be what it becomes.

If I do that, another change will likely happen. The A Wizard’s Work series will be over and will only ever be a duology. The new book and whatever follows it will be part of a new series, obviously linked to the first, but will stand on its own. Part of the reason is that I already know that the story that started in Bloodweave wouldn’t likely be finished at the end of the book. I don’t intend to leave it as a straight up cliffhanger, but the Bloodweave story, as I envision it, is much longer than I can fit into one book. It will truly be an epic fantasy.

It’s still all up in the air, but I said I would post more, and I would talk more about what’s happening, so there you go. I’m going to give it no more than another two weeks before I make a final decision. I might make the decision tomorrow. But if you have thoughts on it, let me know in the comments.

Oh, yeah, I finished the hot dogs while I was writing this. They were tasty.

Finished October And Other Updates

This morning, quite unexpectedly, October came to an end. I’d felt like I had started moving toward an ending a few days ago, but I didn’t think I’d stumble over it quite this soon. I would have said, when I woke up this morning, that there were at least a couple days left.

But in my second session today, things wrapped themselves up in ways I hadn’t expected, and I found myself with no more story to write.

October is, I think, a much more subtle story than I’ve written previously. It certainly isn’t like anything else I’ve done. It’s going to sit for a couple weeks before I get down to reading it and learning just what I’ve perpetrated on the world. I’ll probably let it go until just after I release Minders. It’ll be released at the end of September, just in time for you to read it in… October.

Coming up, next, though, is Minders. This bio-tech thriller/superhero origin story will be out Thursday, May 29th in most online stores. I’ve ordered what should be the last of proof copies, and if it’s in good shape, which I expect it to be, I’ll be spending Memorial Day weekend uploading it everywhere.

There’s one more thing. Parted Out: Grim Repo Files #2 has a release date, too. July 29, 2014. I’m really excited to get these books out, finally. It’s been a long, hard year, but things are finally coming together.

Tomorrow morning, I pick up where I left off on Bloodweave. I’m excited about it, too. I can’t wait to learn what Robert, Angela, Gerard, Nina, and Demetrius are going to do.

Writing Again

In the last post, I made some predictions about time frames and other things, and I was wrong on pretty much all of them. Minders din’t come out before Christmas, I didn’t really get back to writing as soon as I thought I would, and Grim Repo 2 is still sitting on my hard drive.

But that’s all old news.

We’re still dealing with some issues (who isn’t), but things have now progressed to the point that I’ve been able to write regularly again. Fourteen out of the last sixteen days, in fact. I can finally get out of my head and into my characters heads, and it feels really good.

This weekend, I’m formatting Minders for paper. It’ll be released at the end of May. It is, I think, one of the most exciting books I’ve written, to date. Usually, by this time in the process, I can’t stand to read my book again. This time, I’m looking forward to having to do the proofread.

Grim 2 is slated for a late July release. The book October (which I’m writing right now), is due out at the end of September. If I have time, I’ll slip in a couple of the stories that I’ve got sitting around.

I’d like to get these things out faster, but I’m not writing full time. Getting us on a firm financial footing takes precedence, right now, but I’m back on track and pushing ahead.

And as soon as I’m done writing October, I’m going to pick up Bloodweave again and get it out to you as soon as I possibly can.