November 2013 After-Action Report

Yes, it was that kind of a month....

It didn’t exactly start like this...

So much happened between Halloween and Thanksgiving. Bleeding Kansas got taken off the e-book market for a refit and a new cover; I took a week to go through and smack down every last typo we didn’t get on the first three run-throughs. I corrected an error in regards to the use of a firearm and took out what seemed like nine pages of adverbs. It’s a new edition, a new look, and we hope it tears up the charts. I’m definitely thankful for the opportunity to give the first book in The Saga of the Dead Silencer the attention it deserves at the hands of a much more seasoned writer, namely, me.

...nor did it end like this. I have sworn to myself not
to let the jack o’ lantern go like this in the future.
 Seems cruel.

I’m still trying to come up with an alternate title to the second book (working title: The Resilient) (UPDATE: It's Grace Among the Dead), which I’m still scrambling to finish. I’ve made some progress on it, though. It’s hovering around 90,000 words and could easily top out at 100,000. I need to hurry up with this post so I can get back to it.

Still, I can’t ignore the blog, can I? Not when November has had an all-time personal best record of hits—and it would have been much, much more, had I managed to maintain the quality and quantity of posts after a very good start at the beginning of the month.

We lost Thanksgiving to the retailers, but at least we’re talking about Thanksgiving, not ignoring it altogether as we seem to do most years. We had our first really prolonged, hard freeze of five days, which looks to be a pattern for the winter to come. I got sick, thought my diverticulitis had come back, but it hadn’t. My youngest child turned 17.  

December has a hard act to follow. Christmas will be more of a challenge than ever, given my financial situation. But I have a book to finish. I might take time out to play with another book I’ve always wanted to write on recovering Christmas from the commercial and emotional abyss. This being the kind of Christmas I’m looking at, I can’t think of a better time to do it.

I’m already at the point where I can see the other side of this, when the New Year is not so new and it’s just plain winter. That’s what I generally have the most trouble with—all these months of celebration, and now what? The Super Bowl? Valentine’s Day? Please.

Meanwhile it’s the second day of December and I’ve yet to properly decorate my office. We have celebrations to celebrate, revels to revelate. Right now, I’ll settle for finishing one more chapter, so I can go on to the next. Here’s to what happens next.

Thanksgiving Day: the Four Fluffies of the Apocalypse await the annual unpacking of the Xmas Tree.