Did quite a bit of writing today.  I’m almost done with chapter three of The Accidental Hero.  It’s always a little scary delving into a completely new story with new characters that each need their own personalities, back stories, etc…, but it’s also fun to let those things come out as I write.  It’s one of my favorite things as an author honestly.

Anyway, progress is being made.  Not sure how long it’ll take to write the whole thing though.  Writing a whole new property takes a lot more work than writing a new book in an established property like the Unseen Things universe.

We’ll see…

Just finished chapter 1 of The Accidental Hero.  So far I’m happy with how it’s coming along, but it is only the first chapter, and I still have a lot of things to work out along the way.  The Unseen Things series was like a comfortable old shoe I could just delve into and start writing whatever I felt like writing.  Writing standalone novels is like writing the first book of a series.  You have to world build completely from scratch, and the way I write, that all just evolves organically.  Virtually nothing is pre-planned, and the stuff that is, is all subject to change at the drop of a hat so it fits into the story the way it’s evolving.  The ideas I was working with when I started the Unseen Things series changed drastically as I wrote the first book.  They were replaced by better ideas, and that’s why I don’t pre-plan my works.  I allow them to evolve in whatever ways they feel like they should as I’m writing.

Speaking of writing, my hands aren’t a hundred percent yet by any means, but at least I can type now without constant typos, so that’s good at least.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  Catch ya on the flip side. 😉

I had my second carpal tunnel surgery several weeks ago, and even though I still have tendon swelling, tightness, and numbness in both hands, my right hand is quite functional, and my left is well on the path to recovery.

I decided to end the Unseen Things series with the 22nd book, Aftermath.  I got about ten chapters into a 23rd book, but I just wasn’t feeling it.  There was some good stuff in there, but the rest was just feeling forced.  Aftermath was written to be the final book in the series, so I’m not too awful disappointed, but still, it’s kind of sad knowing there’ll likely never be another book in the Unseen Things universe.

That said, I was talking to a writer friend of mine online the day before yesterday, and during that conversation I got a germ of an idea for a new book.  So far I’ve only written the intro, so I’ll just have to see where it leads.  The book is called The Accidental Hero.  Let your mind wander with that, since that’s what I’m doing as well at the moment.

Anyway, that’s enough for now.  I need to get back to doin’ nothin’, so I’ll have time to do nothin’ later as well. 😉

Back in April I had carpal tunnel surgery on my right hand.  During this time, my left hand was also going bad, and it’s only gotten progressively worse.  I haven’t been able to write, I can’t play music, I can’t work out, and my life has been diminished in ways that has left me depressed and miserable.  Even after my surgery tomorrow, there’ll be a several months long healing process, and the nerve healing will likely take years.  My right hand is functional, even though I still have tightness in the tendons, but the nerve damage has only partially healed.  I shouldn’t have waited this long to get the other hand done, but at least I got the surgery scheduled right away instead of having to wait weeks longer to get it done.

Anyway, wish me luck.

So, when my hand issues allowed it and when I was able to work without distractions, I was writing the next book in the Unseen Things series, which would likely be the last book in the series, at least for quite some time.  Not because the content would bring the series to a definitive conclusion, but because I just don’t have anything more I feel like I want to cover in it, and that’s the problem with the book I’m currently working on.  I started it because I had a few ideas for things I wanted to do with it, but then I came to realize that while I was happy with one particular storyline, I felt like the rest of it all felt forced, and I was having a hard time even getting myself to write any of it.  As such, I believe I need to just stop.

So, here’s what I mean by stopping.  I mean I’m going to go back through this book from the beginning, and I’m going to remove and replace everything I’m, not happy with that doesn’t relate to the main story arc that I actually am happy with.  I’ve deleted and replaced whole scenes before, but I’ve never shit-canned this amount of writing.  It kills me to do it, but I’d rather dump it all and replace it with story elements that would be something I’d be proud to have out there, rather than putting out something that just feels forced, and isn’t really working.  My mistake was not ending the series with Aftermath.  To be honest, I should have just ended it there.  Hell, maybe I actually will.  I don’t know.  I’ll just have to see how things work out.  Maybe I’ll take some time off from this one to write another standalone book, and then revisit it after.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  I’ll post again when I have things figured out.

I have an author interview up on the Awesome Gang site.  You can check it out here.

I’ve updated my press page with this interview, as well as adding a 2015 interview I filled out on Smashwords that I’d forgotten to add on there.  Also, I noticed that all my podcast interviews with Wayne Clingman were no longer online, so I removed the links to those.  I’d like to once again thank Wayne for doing those interviews with me.  He’s truly a wonderful human being.