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Thanks to my writers group that I’ve been a member of for quite some time now, I’ve been forced to write things that are completely out of my normal style of writing.  It’s good to gain this sort of experience as a writer, because in the end it’ll only serve to make you better at your craft.  In this particular piece, I tried to bring out the absolute torment that one feels when they love someone that they’ll never have.

You can read The Missing Piece of My Soul right here.

I belong to a local writers group that’s full of some really awesome people.  The word “moist” has become this running joke with us, so this morning on our Facebook page, one of our people posted something he’d written that used the word moist.  He called it his moist sentence for the day.  Then another girl from the group, not to be outdone, posted something of her own using the word moist.

So…not to be outdone by either of them, I came up with this little gem…

“The worms crawled over his face, leaving several moist trails in their stead that his mind repeatedly traced over and over, seeing them as though they were streaks of light on a mask that hovered in the air before him. It was bad enough being bound and buried alive with nothing but a simple breathing tube to sustain him, but now he had far more to worry about, as those things that lived below the ground…beneath our very feet began to encroach upon his person. Would someone find him before they began to devour him as though he were nothing more than a heap of rotting compost? That was the question that plagued him as he suddenly felt something wiggling around his ear, as though it were desperately searching for a way inside.”

It’s been a while since I last posted an update.  Mostly I just got burned out and needed to take a little break to recharge the ol’ batteries.  In this case, that break involved burying myself in the game Witcher 3 for god knows how many hours now.  My god that’s a long game.  The amount of content and side quests in it are just insane, and it does get quite addictive.

I also got a new bass.  I got one of the new Fender Elite American Jazz basses, and I fell instantly in love with it, so I’ve been spending a lot of time playing bass lately too.

On the bright side, I’m basically caught up with everything at this point, so I have absolutely nothing hanging over my head at the moment.  I’m finally able to relax and enjoy life instead of feeling like every new thing that comes in is just something else on my back that I can’t get out from under.  That’s been my life for months and months now, and I’m finally able to breathe again.

As for Cindy’s Story, I’m almost done with chapter 8 right now.  I have less than a thousand words to go in it I think, so it’s about half done.  I’m going to get back to working on it today, and then when I finish I’m going to really just edit the hell out of it with a fine toothed comb, because this is not only going to be the first book I make available in paperback as well as digital, but it’s also one that I’m going to attempt to farm out to agents.  I didn’t have much luck getting an agent with my series, due in part I assume because of the sheer size of it, so I’m hoping that farming out a stand alone will get me better results and help me to get a foot in the door.  We’ll see what happens.  If not, it’s no big loss.  I’ll still be self publishing in any case.

That’s about it for now.  Cindy’s story has turned out better than I ever could have hoped for so far, and I’m really looking forward to getting it out there.  There’s a lot of humor in this one, as well as one of the most hilariously irritating characters I’ve ever written.  I just introduced her in chapter 8 and I really went over the top with that scene.  I’ll try to pop in to post more updates here and there as things progress.

Unable to come up with a better title, Cindy’s Story will be the official title of my next book.  That’s what I’ve been calling it ever since I first came up with the idea, so the name just sort of stuck.

I designed the cover for it today, and I just finished chapter four.  Work was delayed by the passing of my father and some other things that have been going on, plus it’s slow going because I’m writing a non-series book.  I had this problem with book 17 of the series as well.  It was all new characters and a totally new setting, so I can’t just pound through stuff like that the way I can when I’m working within the normal series canon.

So it will take a bit longer with this one, but I’m really happy with how it’s going so far.  I don’t have an estimate yet for when I’ll be done with it, but when I get closer to the end I should have a better idea.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  Just wanted to pop in and give a little update.

My father passed away last week, so obviously I haven’t been writing much since then.  I did just finish chapter three however, and the story is coming along nicely.  I’m throwing a lot of humor into this one, so I think the final product is going to be something that pretty much everyone can read and enjoy rather than being geared toward a more genre specific audience like the series is.

This book will be and was always intended to be a standalone.  There will be no others with these characters.  As much fun as I’m having writing them, unless the book really takes off and people are clamoring for another book, then there won’t be one.  If there is a demand, then I’m sure I could come up with another story for them.

In any case, I am plugging away at it, and when I finish this one I’ll write the next one in the Unseen Things series while I try to come up with some ideas for some other standalone books to write.  I’ve never had much of a problem coming up with story ideas.  I just need to settle on one.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  Oh, one last thing.  Cindy’s Story is really sticking with me as a title for this one.  I know it’s not a great title, but the more I think of it, the more I like it.  It may not be descriptive as far as titles go, but it really is her story, so it’s appropriate.

I’ve started work on my first ever non-series related book, Cindy’s Story.  I don’t know if that’ll be the final title or not, but that’s what I’ve been calling it since I first came up with the idea, so for right now that’s what it’ll be called.

It’s about an average girl named Cindy who hasn’t had much luck in her life.  She can’t seem to keep a job, even though it’s usually not her fault, and the one guy she managed to have a stable relationship with left her for a large breasted waitress at a sports bar.  Now desperate for a job so she can get money to pay her rent, her landlord tells her about his private detective brother who’s looking for an assistant…and that’s where it all begins.

This book is being written to be a standalone.  I don’t know if it will stay that way or not, but I wanted to have at least one standalone book out there to introduce people to my writing, so that maybe they’ll give the series a try.  Aside from that, after publishing twenty books in the Unseen Things series in the last two and a half years, I needed to take a little break.  Writing this book is like a vacation for me.

Fear not though, I will be writing the next book in the series after this one is done and published.