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I just added two more short pieces that I wrote from writing prompts in my writers group to the Bonus Scenes & Short Stories section here on the website.

A Prison Without Walls – Literally what it says.  It’s a prison without any locks, bars, or outer walls, and yet the prisoners can’t leave.  Anyone who’s ever tried has met a tragic end.

The Stars Have Aligned – The stars aligned and people all over reacted to it in a variety of ways.  A man who works in a coroner’s office relates what happened on that not-so-fateful day.

I just added three more short stories to the Bonus Scenes & Short Stories section here on the site.  All three were written for the writing prompts I do with my writers group that I meet with every week.

The newly posted stories are:

The Great Q-tip Phobia – A man is deathly afraid of Q-tips, and for a very good reason.

God is an Elected Position – The position of God is an elected position, and the elections are coming up soon.

Scare Your Reader in One or Two Sentences – Exactly what the title states.

Hope you enjoy them. 🙂

I will be interviewed today once again by Wayne Clingman on the Milwaukee Mob podcast.  If you’d like to listen live, I’ll be interviewed at 11am MST, after which I’ll add a link in the press section here to the archived show.  We’ll be talking about the Unseen Things series, Cindy’s Story, my next book Retribution, and about writing in general.

Here’s the link if you’d like to listen in: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/themilwaukeemob/2017/01/26/duane-l-martin-a-writers-story

So…this is how my last month and a half has gone.  I was sick as hell for a month while trying to keep up with the work I had to do for my day job, and then the skies opened up a great big can of winter whoop ass on us and dumped more snow than we’ve had since the 80s.  Oh, and did I mention that my ISP is ending their DSL service?  I had to switch to CenturyLink, and that’s been a great big ol’ pain in the ass too.

The long and the short of it is, I haven’t had my head in writing at all lately.  A big part of it is all the work I have to do for my job, which leaves me pretty much drained mentally.  Another part is that I was sick for so long that I lost the feeling for what I was writing.  I managed to finish three chapters, but I just can’t find the motivation to work on it.  That said, I’m super happy with how the story’s gone so far, so when I finally do bury myself in it again and get it finished, I’m sure it’ll have been worth the wait.  There’s already some pretty nasty stuff going on in it, and there’s a lot more to come.

I just wanted to post a little update.  I’ve just been beaten down and tired, so right now I’m trying to get caught up on both work and sleep so I can get my head back into my writing.  Hopefully that’ll happen soon.

There is some seriously nasty cold going around here that everyone seems to be getting, including me.  I’ve been sick as hell for a week and a half now.  Whatever this is, it’s really bad, and it seems to have three stages.  The first day and a half or so it’s pretty mild.  You may even think you’re getting over it.  Then near the end of the second day, it hits you like a damn freight train and turns into a severe head cold.  The following day you lose your voice.  For three days you’ll barely be able to talk, and then for ages after your voice will slowly start to recover, but only very slowly.  Then about a week into it, it changes into something else entirely.  You start feeling completely dried out, and you get a dry cough that often leads to serious coughing fits that’ll make you wish you were dead.  There’s something going on in the throat too that makes it feel like you tried to swallow a pill that got stuck in there and won’t shift, even though there’s nothing there.

Oh, and on top of all that, I got a flare up of gout in my left foot as well. 😛

Despite it all, I somehow managed to finish chapter 2 in my next book today.  Progress on it has been extremely slow for a variety of reasons, including work, illness, and general life issues that I’ve had to deal with.  Don’t worry though, I’ll never give up on it.  It may be slow going, but I’m going to try to be more on top of working on it now.

Anyway, I haven’t posted an update in a while.  That’s what’s been going on here.  Oh, and on the 23 / 24th of this month, the site will be down for a while.  I’m changing internet providers and getting new static IPs, so things will be down until the new ones propagate.

I finally finished the first chapter of Retribution.  It’s been really tough for me finding the mental energy to work on it because of all the editing and other work I’ve been doing for my job, but we had a writing sprint workshop at my writers group tonight, and I managed to blow through most of the rest of the first chapter.  I just finished it up now.  It’s always slow going with new stories because you’re creating an entirely new cast of characters from scratch, which also entails a whole lot of character development that has to take place.

This is also the first time I’ve written horror / suspense, so I want to make sure I do a good job with it.  This isn’t a genre I’ll write often I don’t think, but it is one that I wanted to explore.  I’m pretty sure my next book will be a paranormal novel of some sort, but I’m not sure what form it’ll take.  I’ll think more about it as I get closer to finishing this one.

Anyway, I just wanted to post a little update.  I’m pretty excited about this one.  I just need to find the time and the energy to keep myself in the cycle of working on it daily.