Wow. I hadn’t realized I hadn’t posted here in quite some time. It’s been nine months since my last update. I’ve actually been writing a lot. But it either goes into my hard drive, or it’s posted on Facebook or Medium. I suppose I’ve let the Blog sit a bit.
Partially, it was a sense that I didn’t have much coming out to talk about. I try and get a few books out each year, and use the website and blog to promote them. But that kind of tailed off it felt. And, to be completely truthful, I don’t think I’ve got much of a readership on this thing. Or any readership at all. Not even when I was posting extremely regularly in prior years. I think that the Internet has evolved, often and perhaps mostly, in toxic directions, and Blogs like this have largely been left behind. There was a time when a good steady Blogger could build up a real following. I don’t think that’s the case now. Certainly, what I was finding was that there were no comments, my comments pages were just drowning in in spam-bots.
So technically, I guess, this is just kind of an accessible memoir. The real shot at building an audience is on social media, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, social media and discussion forums like Medium, Quora, Reddit, Substack. Most of which I’m hopeless at… but I’m devoted to at least giving it a try. So I’ve written a lot there, to no success whatsoever. But I do get a dozen or so people occasionally reading a facebook post.
Partially, I’ve just being busy with other things, as I’ll be noting. Let me offer a loose chronological update.
- Released a second collection of Funny Fantasy & Science Fiction stories – Drunk Slutty Elf and Zombies. Mainly old humour stories sitting in my hard drive, but with a few new stories, so I could feel some integrity.
- Did a book launch for Drunk Slutty Elf and Other Stories and Drunk Slutty Elf and Zombies in the spring, 2023.
- Redid and renamed my Doctor Who series from the ‘Unauthorized Stories‘ to ‘Pirate Histories’ writing another 90,000 words and turning it from two books into a trilogy;
- Produced, edited and published two collections of short stories, Benny the Antichrist and Crawling to the Moon, by Scott Ellis, and hosted a book launch for him earlier in 2023;
- Re-issued my novel, The Mermaid’s Tale, under Fossil Cove. I had been trying to use it to pitch to agents and publishers, but apparently because it exists as an audio-book that I can’t take down, it’s burned. Audio-book rights are that big a part of publishing these days.
- Got involved with R.J. Hore, and rescued him and his books from a Zombie Publisher, edited, formatted, designed covers, set up a Book launch and republished his Toltec Trilogy and stand-alone We’re Not in Kansas under Fossil Cove.
- I’ve been working on a couple of erotic story collections, about 150,000 words, and an erotic novel to be published under a pseudonym;
- Did a novella and stories, about 65,000 words worth on The Squad, a horror concept about a band of serial killers enlisted in the army, ultimate goal to compile them into a single book for release – I’m almost there;
- Editing a Vampire novel, Bloodsucker, also potentially for release;
- Edited a collection of 29 short stories (40,000 words) for the Echelon Collaboration with artist Robert Pasternak, to be published by At Bay Press;
- Compiling and editing Ultimate Thule, an Alternate History chronicle. for eventual publication;
- Wrote 50,000 words of an Alt-History Doctor Who fanfic, and currently editing and stripping out the fan elements for a nifty film script;
- Wrote bunch of random short stories about this or that, some of them literary, probably about 50,000 words;
- Submitted to a literary fiction short story contest and made the longlist;
- Attended When Words Collide in Calgary, and did a reading, a presentation and seven panels;
- Attended North American Science Fiction Convention, and did several programming items, including a presentation on AI and a reading;
- Did a five part workshop series on self publishing for the Manitoba Writers Guild and donated my fee back to the organization;
- Preparing to attend and participate in programming for World Fantasy Convention in Kansas, and Can-Con Literary Festival in Ottawa;
- Written a lot of short essays on various topics, including writing, mostly posted on Facebook and Medium.
- Assisting another writer, one based in Montreal, in getting her rights back for seven books that are with a sketchy publisher;
- Volunteering to do a lot of programming for the Manitoba Writers Guild.
- Filed two Applications with the Manitoba Arts Council, and one with the Canada Council, for a Fantasy novel. Didn’t get any of them.
- Started a few pitches to agents.
Gosh. When I put it down like that, it feels kind of busy. And yet, I don’t feel I’ve accomplished all that much. I have this permanent sense of spinning my wheels. I’ve got two fantasy novels and a humorous vampire novel sitting on the back burner in the early stages, and barely touched them.
Maybe it’s working on behalf of other people. Both Scott Ellis and R.J. Hore turned into major time consuming projects. It’s weird to realize that Fossil Cove Press published nine books in the last year, but only three of them were mine? Or that I’ve done three book launches, but only one for mine.
I’d planned to release a bunch of books this year – two horror books – Bloodsucker, and The Squad; two erotica collections and a novel; the Pasternak thing with At Bay Press was to come out, Ultimate Thule, as well as Drunk Elf and Zombies and the Mermaid’s. Nine projects in all. I got two early on, carry overs from last year. Not doing great. Of course, At Bay has postponed Echelon until next year. My cover artist on the erotica stuff has been waylaid by cancer so I’m waiting on her recovery. And honestly, work has been incredibly busy and demanding this year.
Anyway, I’m thinking that what I might do over the next few months is repost some of the writing or spec fiction related stuff elsewhere, just to fill out the content, and keep a record.
Who knows? Someone might read this someday.