Reflections

It’s been an odd month here at the casa. I almost blogged many times.

Almost.

Why I didn’t is a matter of preference. Quite a bit happened around here, but not a lot of it was positive. And rather than bore/annoy everyone with a recitation of my ills, I chose silence.

Fair warning, this post may contain a recitation of ills.

It’s now been a year since my last real job. The cupboards are literally and figuratively bare, and in the next few weeks instead of pretending to write I’ll be cataloging and posting collectibles to try and pay the rent. Odds are high that we’ll cover this coming month, but the month after is highly suspect.

The first part of this year was fair to partly cloudy. It was six months of great creativity for not a lot of money, and culminated in the release of a moderately successful book.

I say moderate, because although it’s selling steadily, a shared-world novella isn’t going to win any awards or tear up the sales charts. I wrote the book and I got paid, two things any author can smile at. I’ve plans to write more in the same world if there’s enough interest from my publisher, but my focus is more on selling the two other completed novels in my shoebox and finishing the short novel that was next on the list for attention.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately, observing other people’s interactions with the words. I’m still amazed with how well Hearts of Iron came together, and other than some unfortunate errors I introduced during copy-editing, there’s really nothing I’d change about the book other than it’s length. I could easily add in another 15K or so words, but since I covered that same ground with a few choice paragraphs my editor brain tells me to leave well enough along and move on.

Speaking of Hearts of Iron, the Audiobook is now available from Audible.com. It clocks in at just over three hours, and my hefty cast of characters is ably served by narrator Luke Daniels. If you like audiobooks, it’s not a lot of dollars, and my royalty statement will thank you almost as much as I will. I’ve listened to it twice myself, and couldn’t be happier with the result. There’s something very satisfying just to hear the title and author name read aloud, an affirmation that I’m really not wasting my time with writing after all.

Speaking of wasting time, Civilization V has again captured my attention, such as it is. I’ve got a chapter needing another 500 words, and an outline to follow that aren’t getting the attention they deserve, and that pesky need to seek employment calling me as well, but click, click, click, whydoesmyshoulderhurtsomuch is as satisfying as it gets right now.

Not moving is the real de-motivator, I think. when I sit down to write of late, I think about all the other things I should be doing, and then proceed to accomplish nothing at all. This post is being composed at my dining room table, with two glaring cats and the remains of my breakfast as witness that I can in fact accomplish something today. That is to say, besides sinking more ships towards my next badge, of course.

I should get on that. I should do a lot of things. ALL THE THINGS! Because my original plans for the second half of 2013 are so far out the window I’m not even sure where they’ve gotten to. I could go dig ditches. I could build houses in foreign countries. I could apply for the one-way Mars trip.

Or, I could stay here and be a grown-up. I don’t think I’m very good at it, to be honest, but it’s a bit late to back out now.