Five Days Till The End...Of 2017

I've been busy.

That's why there have been no updates since I released my novella, The Grim, in October. I've been busy behind the scenes as a publisher and an editor. I've also dealt with some personal/family issues that have shaken the status quo to its core, so I'm still recovering too.

Now, I open my eyes wider and realize the year's almost gone. How'd that happen?

My company has made some great strides this year and there were some good books published. I started a very ambitious project that has certainly been a test as well as a pleasure to do. MYTHIC, the magazine I edit and publish, is still going. I'm about ready to drop Issue #5 if you believe it. More to do with that project too. Lots more. You'll here about it all as I go through some learning curves and pick up a few new skills along the way.

With the year about up, I'm starting to look ahead to 2018. Plans are being made. Projects are already ramping up in some cases. There are a lot of dreams that I'd like to make realities next year. I can't guarantee anything, but I can put things into motion and see what happens. If nothing else, it will all be interesting.

I plan to return to writing in a serious way in 2018. I want to finish things previously started and move on to new work. New books and new short stories are the goal. I have a lot of hopes tied to writing this coming year and I hope I manage some of it.

I hope all of you have had a Happy Holiday season and I wish each of you a Happy New Year.

A New Novella Out.

I recently released a novella I wrote titled The Grim.

Here's the description:

Reeling from terrible tragedy, young Rion Evonrule is thrust out of his familiar world and sets out on a desperate quest to deliver crucial news about a terrible blight that is spreading across the land--dark, living plague that steals the souls of mankind and enslaves them to its inhuman will. The Grim. A powerful mage may hold the answers. Rion is the messenger.

You can purchase it on Kindle for $4.99 at the moment but it will be available in other formats and potentially in print in the near future.

Once A Month...

I do try to get back here at least once a month and I'm skating at the edge again as we come to the final days of June. The year is almost half over already? How did that happen? I've been getting busier with my publishing work and other work to make the ends meet so that explains some of it. Oh, and it is looking to get busier, as it must as I develop this plan of mine.

Plan, you ask. What plan?

Honestly, it's not such a dark secret. I am just more focused on it than I've been in the past. Basically, I'm trying to fully launch my publishing and writing efforts into the air. They've started hovering just above the ground but haven't yet soared. The point is really to do as much as I can to make all of this work I'm doing the only sort of work I need to making a living. I love publishing. I love writing. I want to be able to do only that and to order my day fully around those sort of activities.

A challenge, to say the least? Yes.

It's a financial challenge, certainly. The company is not currently profitable enough for me to go in full time, so I have to be content to work on the various projects with little or no pay while I work another job that actually pays enough to support me. Don't get me wrong. This has been changing for the better. Revenue is up. I'm inching, closer and closer, to that goal, but who wouldn't like to accelerate that process?

So, I keep at it. I find new ways to promote my own work and the work of the awesome writers who've entrusted me to publish their books. I'm very grateful for them and for the opportunities that they've given me.

I'm already doing some of the things I love to do. I designing and publishing books, I'm editing my own science fiction and fantasy magazine, MYTHIC, and I hope to do more.

If you're following me and haven't bought one of my books or one of the authors' books I've published via Founders House Publishing, consider doing that today. Consider supporting MYTHIC  by become a subscriber.

I want to bring great stories to new readers.

I'll be back later to talk about what's going on with a new update. Thanks.

Update: Getting Stuff Done

I've made some further progress on writing since the last post although I did not get really moving on short stories like I thought I would. Publisher me has still been doing more followed by Editor/Magazine maker me. Writer me has been left to wait again and that's not set well with me. Making strides on projects is fine and necessary for the goals I have in mind for those ventures. At the same time, I like to think I'm first and foremost a writer and that is certainly a venture I do not mean to shove into the background.

I've related that there have been factors in my own life that have probably influenced this turn, so I can at least try to be a little easier on myself. That said, I did catch a few good moments yesterday to do something I haven't done a while. I finished a book. It's a novella or short novel in fact and one I knew I could sense an ending for so I went after it and wrapped it up. There was a sense of relief in that mission accomplished.

Yes, I could actually get fiction done again. I had this little nagging fear that I was caught in a looping cycle where nothing every really ended and I would just advance all of my works-in-progress but never complete them. (Yes, I have several unfinished books languishing on my hard drive.)

This whole turn of events just serves to highlight the simple need to get stuff done. As Heinlein has said in his famed rules of business, "Finish what you write." I haven't been the greatest finisher of fiction lately. Well, in a very long time. What works I have complete are starting to emerge from their limbo status, some as part of collections like the Cursed King And Other Stories, or published in MYTHIC. I think more of them will show up in the coming months, making it necessary to write more. Finding the focus for that has been tough, but the desire is still there so I hope you can wish me luck in pursuing that aim.

That novella I mentioned will now get looked over and I will let you know when it's ready for publication. The next step is the next story. Or in my case, the next work-in-progress--maybe the one closest to completion. That's the approach I think will work for now. I just keep moving down the line, finishing book after book, story after story, until I hit a true opening with nothing left in the queue.

I'll also admit that none of this addresses the nonfiction that is percolating in my brain and trying to find the most apt express so it might appear as a book too. That's something I'll keep closer to the vest for now.

Onward to more writing!