Wait, it's almost July?

And suddenly a month has passed. Yikes.

I've been busy. First of all, what should, *hopefully* be the final-ish revision of Duskfall (you can tell how confident I am about them already, can't you?) has taken more time and effort than I'd hoped. Ain't that always the way. I'm happy to be wrapping them up, though.

I've also joined a writing group, so that has been cool. I'm sure I'll talk more about that later, but I'm very happy about it so far.

Oh, and I went to Alaska. Had an adventure or two. Because, you know, that's where I'm from and such.

Between those things, which are for the most part very awesome, and some decidedly not-awesome other things like Hugo award controversies and the recent murders in Charleston, I've been avoiding saying much on the internet of late. But I think I've collected myself a bit and I'm ready to jump back into blogger-ness, which means continuing my How I Got Published and #FIF Series (Serieses? Serieses'ses''''? Stupid english...), checking in more with general updates on my writing (including writing group stuff) and life in general (including Alaska stuff), and maybe even sharing some thoughts I have about recent events. So, that's that.

Updates!

ICYMI, I changed the layout of the blog pretty significantly a few weeks back, and I'm digging it so far. Also, I've got two new pages up:

"Appearances," where you can check out some cool places I'll be and when, and

"How I Got Published," which is just a dedicated page for the ongoing series I'm writing on, well, exactly that. (You can find the first post here.)

Also, you'll notice I've changed the names of my pages from my "Yeahbuwha," "Yeahbuwho," etc. to more professional-y things. No comment.

Finally, you may also see that the progress bar for Dark Immolation is getting miiiiighty close to 100%. I think I am actually very close to finishing the book, just a few weeks out, perhaps. The progress bar may be a bit deceiving, though, because it tracks my progress towards my word count goal of 225K words--and I think I'm going to overshoot that by just a bit. (My original word count goal for DI was 150K. Yikes.) But I'm getting very close, and I'm very happy about that.

Of course, once I finish the first draft, I'm going to need to take another pass at it before I send it out, but all things in due time, my friends.

I'll also need to get one more draft of Duskfall hammered out before my deadline (hey! I have a deadline!), but that shouldn't be too difficult. Just some minor changes, fixing some language issues, etc. on that front.

So that's what's going on lately! Should be another #HIGP post up tomorrow. Until then, folks!

Anyone know where I can get, like, medals, or whatever?

...because I want to give one to myself for writing over 66,000 words in the month of March.

Sixty-six. Thousand. Words.

Booyah. (Booya? Bewyaw? Berenchua [because phonetics]? Hmmm…)

So excuse me while I pat myself on the back for a minute, because that’s definitely a record for me. I mean, 66K is an entire novel in most genres. Especially YA. It’s like two novels in middle-grade! And yet here I am, writing fantasy, and 66K amounts to about 1/4 of my current WIP. Sometimes I wonder what on earth I have done by choosing to write fantasy…it certainly isn’t the most efficient way to make money writing.

But you know what? It damn well is the most fun. So SUCK IT everyone who writes everything boring!

Okaygoodbye.*

* I may or may not have had two caffeinated sodas (after a period of relative abstinence) and a giant ice-cream covered lava cake in the past hour. That is totally to blame for my strange mood and not all those qualities that just make me strange inertly. INNATELY. Whatever.

I Went to NYC and Met with my Agent and it was Fun

Believe it or not, in the midst of all this Italy-mania, I'm still actually writing. I even got quite a fair share of writing done while on the trip, on trains mostly. It was pretty cool. I just took a little notebook (like a real notebook, the kind with paper) and a pen and got some writing in whenever I could. Writing by hand was an interesting experience; I'd be interesting in attempting an entire novel that way one day. I'm really glad I did it, too. I've gotten into a great routine with Dark Immolation lately, and I was worried that going on a trip would throw me out of that, but I think taking the time to write while on vacation really helped me stay focused. And it was kind of cool--writing on location, basically.

One perk of going to Italy was a 12-hour layover in NYC, where I got to have lunch with Sam and a couple others from JABberwocky. That was awesome. It was cool to get some actual facetime with the agency, see their offices (which are now in a prime location just a few blocks from Times Square), meet a lot of the other agents that work there, and so forth. I had fish and chips at an Irish pub whose name and location both elude me. But it was delicious. And Krystyna, one of the foreign rights agents at JABberwocky, had some notes for me on Duskfall that were really fantastic. She gave me some great ideas for the direction I want to go in and what I want to focus on for the next revision of the novel. In fact, based on that excitement and some other conversations we had, I've put work on Dark Immolation on hold and jumped right into revising Duskfall again. Version 6.0 this time.

As you can see I'm about 12% through, although that doesn't count a lot of my own prewriting and own notes as I've read through Krystyna's suggestions and some of the thoughts some editors had who have passed on the manuscript. I'm hoping now that a lot of that preliminary stuff is taken care of, the revision will really take off and I'll be done with it in a couple of weeks or so. It's going well so far, and I'm pleasantly surprised by a lot of things in the novel--I really think it's got some good moments. That said, I don't think it's achieved it's full potential yet (not even close in some ways), so I'm happy to take another pass at it.

Anyway, so that's what's going on with writing these days. Another revision, and then after that I'll probably jump back into Dark Immolation...or, perhaps, depending on how things go, a more direct sequel to Duskfall.

In the meantime, I've still got two more Italy posts queued up, a couple posts to wrap up my musings on story structure, and much more to come!

I'M BAAAAAAACK

Yeah, I've been gone for a couple weeks. Because we've been here:

That's the Pantheon. In Rome. In Italy. My wife and I just spent 2+ weeks there and it was amaaaaziiiing. I'll tell you all about it in the near future.

I've got a whole bunch of other things to say, too. I still have one or two more posts queued up for my series on The Hero's Journey/The Virgin's Promise/Story Structure. I've got some updates regarding what I'm currently working on and a visit with my agent in NYC. And, if I get around to it, I might offer some thoughts on where the TV series Glee has been going recently.

So, you have all that to look forward to! In the meantime, rest assured that I am not dead.

Some Site Updates

Updated the following:

Changed my bio a bit.

Reorganized my Formative Influences page and explained #FIF.

Updated my Current Projects page, detailing the Blood Queen series and the currently existing projects in that universe.

Check 'em out, yo!

Some Minor Updates

I've updated my "Current Projects" and "Backburner" pages, so if you're interested in what I'm working on, check them out!