Duane

I’m very happy to announce that the much delayed 20th book of the Unseen Things series is now available for sale on this website as well as Smashwords, Amazon, Google Play and OmniLit.  It will soon be available on Barnes and Noble, iTunes, Kobo and other retail sites.

This book is a milestone for me.  It’s been almost exactly two and a half years since I began writing the first book of the series, and now I’m able to present you with book 20.  It’s been one hell of a ride so far, and I’ve loved every second of it.

I will be updating the Trivia page with trivia about this book shortly.

Synopsis: Boredom is a horrible thing to suffer through when you’re immortal, but it seems to be the normal state of things whenever there’s down time between one crisis and the next.

In order to alleviate their boredom one afternoon, the others ask Jake and Lana to tell them the story of how they met, and what happened to them between the time when the Echnids first invaded the Earth, and when the pair finally settled down in the town of Cottonwood, Utah.

Also, the secret that Jarrod and the others have been keeping about their ability to alter reality becomes a bit more public when Sarah uses it to help Jake undo the single biggest regret of his life.

Oh man, it’s been a long, hard road to get through this book, and I still have all the editing to do, but at least it’s finally done.  Insomnia and numerous other things got in my way, but I worked through it all and I’ve finally reached the end.  I have some stuff I have to deal with tomorrow, so I might actually start editing it tonight just to get it going.  I really enjoyed writing this one and I had a lot of fun with it.

Anyway, just a quick update to vent my excitement at finally finishing it.  I’ll post again once its edited and published.

I finally finished chapter 14 last night.  It was a struggle to get through it, not only because of my insomnia, but also because it’s the longest chapter in the book so far.  I’ve been trying to force myself to sleep more, and so far it’s helping.  Last night I got six and a half hours and I slept some more during the day today.  It’s helping quite a bit.

Anyway, this is just a short update.  I have two more chapters to write, and I’m already a little bit into one of them, so at least I’m making progress. 🙂

I haven’t posted for a while because I really haven’t had a lot to say.  As I’ve stated previously, I’ve been suffering through a particularly bad bout of insomnia, and that really did a number on my writing schedule.  However, that seems to be easing off now, and not only did I just finish chapter 13 in the current book with some writing that I’m extremely proud of, but through that writing I came up with an idea for another book.  The next book in the series will be called Genesis.  I’ll let you make of that what you will.

However…

I’ve had the start of another book sitting on my hard drive for quite some time now.  It’ll probably be a stand alone and not a part of a larger series, and it’s completely unrelated to the Unseen Things series.  I’ve been wanting to work on it for quite some time now, but I was so involved with the series that I haven’t had the time or the energy to do it.  After 20 books in the Unseen Things series, I think I could use a little break to rest and recharge the ol’ batteries, and writing this other book would be the perfect solution to that.  I’ll still be writing, but it’ll allow me to step away from the series for a bit.

Genesis is going to be a really involved book that’s going to take a lot of thought about what I want to do with it, but it’s a logical progression of the characters and what they’ve become.  They’ve literally been gods for quite some time now, so it’s time they took that final step to solidify their position as such. 😉

Anyway, that’s it for now.  I just wanted to check in to give a little update.  I’m sleeping more consistently and for longer periods of time now, so my focus is returning and I’ve got the creative juices flowing once again, which pleases me to no end.

I recently went for well over two weeks without making any progress in my next book.  There are a variety of reasons for that, but the core reason behind it all is the one I’ve already stated in a previous post.  I suffer from primary, acute insomnia.  Normally it’s tolerable, but the last two months it’s been absolutely destroying me.  I have a few functional hours a day, and the rest of the day I’m either an unfocused mess or I’m sleeping.  Unfortunately, this lack of focus and general heaviness I’m feeling in my head most of the time killed my creativity.  I couldn’t get together the wherewithal to actually sit down and write, and even when I did have enough focus to write, I didn’t know where I wanted to go next with the story because you just can’t think clearly when you’re going through something like this.

That said, I did just recently finish chapter 11, and today I actually did come up with a really cool idea for what to do next, so as soon as I start writing again, at least I’ve got some direction.

My insomnia has never been as bad as it’s been the last couple of months.  I actually had a pretty good day today and got a fair amount of sleep, so I’m hoping it’s a sign that it’s starting to get better.  One can only hope.

Insomnia is a bitch and a half to deal with.  I should know, because  I’ve been dealing with it since I was in my teens, and let me tell you, it’s not what most people think it is.  Most people think it’s just the inability to sleep.  While that’s partially true, it’s not really accurate.  Insomnia is the inability to sleep for long enough periods for your brain to clean itself, which it does while you’re asleep.  When you only sleep for anywhere from one to three hours at a time, it doesn’t allow the brain sufficient enough time to do that, and the result of that is that you walk around mentally unfocused and you have this heaviness in your head like you really want to go to sleep, but you can’t.  You can end up with memory problems, depression and other issues as well.

The fact is, that just recently I went through a few weeks where I had it really bad, and as such I got to a point where I just wasn’t thinking clearly enough to continue writing.  I wanted to, and I knew I should be, but knowing that I should be and having the ability to do so are two different things.

Anyway, I finally got some good, solid sleep.  Enough that I was able to finish up chapter 10 finally.  By the way, chapter 10 has one of the most ridiculous scenes I’ve ever written in it, and considering some of the nonsense I’ve written in past books, that’s saying something.  I was sitting here laughing as I was writing it, and the ridiculousness just sort of started feeding back on itself as I made my way through the scene.

Anyway, that’s what’s been going on.  Hopefully I’ll continue to sleep regularly now, at least for a while.  Wish me luck.