Hey. Hi. It’s Been Awhile.

Well. It’s been a very long time and I have no excuses, except the standard my-life-is-a-mess bullshit that’s been happening for the last sixteen months or so.

Read more: Hey. Hi. It’s Been Awhile.

In the interest of complete transparency, I’ve considered writing a blog post nearly every weekend since the Year of Our Lord 2023 began, and until I opened WordPress (for the first time in I can’t tell you how long), I could have sworn it had only been a couple of months since my last post. Five months, y’all. Nothing since my last Nevada Day/NaNoWriMo post at the end of October.

So thanks for hanging in with me, and let me take this time to catch you all up on some of the things I would have posted about if I had been a more responsible blogger.

NaNoWriMo. Recall when you last heard from your intrepid writer I was days away from the launch of National Novel Writing Month. I had an idea and an outline and was as set to go as I would ever be. And it went fine; the outline didn’t exactly get scrapped, but the story branched in ways I didn’t anticipate, the characters attempted to set fire to my outline, we all screamed at each other, and I hit 50,000 words the day before my birthday. That story isn’t finished; I still have to write the climax where the girl gets saved and the villain is vanquished, and I have no idea how any of that is going to happen. I’m half hoping someday I’ll open that story to find that the words–including a spectacular climax–have written themselves. And with all that AI can do now, who knows? Though it’s 100 percent more likely I’ll have to come up with that climax myself, and that it might be less than spectacular.

I know it’s only April (just a couple of weeks away from northern Nevada spring!), but I’ve already started to think about what this year’s NaNoWriMo project might be. There’s the other outline I wrote for last NaNoWriMo is a possibility, but I’ve also been considering another idea from my constantly-evolving List of Ideas. I have seven months to figure it out. I’ll keep you posted.

Whatever Will Be and other stories. Thank you again to all of you who bought copies of Whatever Will Be, and to those of you who have read it. If you haven’t written a review yet, please do so! I’ve heard the Amazon algorithm won’t notice until there are twenty reviews, and due to my insistence that I will not read them, I have no idea how many reviews are there, what they say, or how many more I still need. If you’ve read it, write a review. It will help me out more than you know. If you don’t have a copy, what are you waiting for? Links to buy your very own copy are on the Books page.

In a piece of exciting news, I laid down the final words to what will become Book #2 at the end of February. This one’s not a novel, but a series of interconnected stories, appropriately called Connections (unless another wowzer of a title hits me before now and…whenever it releases). I’m slowly but surely working on the first rewrite, and hope that like Whatever Will Be, it only requires a couple of drafts. I don’t know anything else, mostly because like most writers–and all adults, if I’m being honest–I’m just making everything up as I go along. In any event, Connections will hit that Books page as soon as my rad cover artist completes a draft of the cover we’re both happy with (to be fair, the draft she’s working from is AWESOME in multiple ways).

What happens now? Well, my friends, your guess is as good as mine. I mean, I’ll continue to work on the Connections rewrite and someday I hope all of you will read it.

But what about this blog?

Loyal readers, I don’t know. I have been thinking a lot lately that it might be time to resume making regular posts. If I’m being completely honest, I’ve missed writing here. It’s like a regular chat with fifty-four (I lost a subscriber) of my closest friends. Or just fifty-four people aren’t turned off my unabashed love of Nevada, consider my self-deprecation hilarious, and aren’t annoyed by my absurd number of parentheticals.

So, I guess I’m hoping to return to regular posts, but I’m not sure what that schedule will look like. Before I took my ultra-long hiatus, I was posting weekly except for November, when my time and brain are consumed by NaNoWriMo. I might start with a more infrequent schedule and stay there, or try to ramp up to a return to weekly posting. It might depend on whether my brain decides to serve up some decent blog post ideas. We all know how posts turn out when I don’t have an idea.

Thank you all for sticking with me throughout the last year’s craziness. I appreciate all of you. I will be in your browser again soon. I promise. Until then, do what makes you happy. I’ve been trying to figure out what that stuff is for myself. As it turns out, writing these stupid posts for all of you is one of them.