Duane

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.

I’ve updated the website with all the 2nd edition synopses and cover images, and I’ve updated the author bio and purchase links as well.  Oh, and I removed the series trailer, since it sucked.  Maybe someday I’ll see if I can come up with something decent, but I’m not too worried about it at the moment.

Nothing else to report really, except that I have five chapters completed in the next book, and I’m suffering a bit of depression over the physical issues I’m having with my hands, and the fact that I’ve been working hard at advertising my books, and I can’t seem to get any traction.

It’s 1:35 am, and I just finished eating some righteous strawberries.  That’s all for now.

I promised myself that I was going to start promoting both the series, and Cindy’s story as soon as I got them all republished.  It was a brilliant plan!  Promote your books, make some money, rinse and repeat.  So…what did my dumb ass do instead?  I started writing the next series book.  I already have two chapters done and I’m working on the third right now.  Not only am I working on another book, but I’m typing with numb fingers on a keyboard I hate just to write it.  Why are my fingers numb?  I had carpal tunnel surgery on my right hand, and the nerves will take up to a year to recover.  My left hand is numb now and needs surgery as well, but I’m going to try to avoid that with ice and stretching if I can.  Why do I hate this keyboard?  Because I’m constantly masking typos because of my fingers, and it’s got a piss poor layout as far as the enter key and the backspace key, and the keys are a bit smaller than I’m used to, so I’m constantly hitting the s with the a, and the \ | key when I go to hit enter.  I wanted a keyboard with the large, backward L enter key that I’m used to, but they’re practically impossible to find anymore.  Sigh…

As for the book, I don’t have a title for it yet, and to be perfectly honest, it’s already turned into something story-wise that I hadn’t intended to do when I started it.  I knew a couple of things that I wanted to do with it, but now I have a story element that just developed on its own that’s going to end up being the main focus of the book.  Not only did it develop on its own, but at the end of the second chapter, it develops in a way that wouldn’t have even occurred to me until it actually came time to write it.  That’s actually one of my favorite things about being an author.  I can just type, and the story flows out of me in such a natural way that it almost feels like I’m channeling it from somewhere.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  Will just snarfed his coffee after Steve mentioned how Tina never seems to have any trouble farting, so I’d better get back to it and help him recover. 😉

As I’m sitting here now, I can’t believe it’s finally over.  Seven years worth of work to re-edit the entire Unseen Things series to second edition, plus adding a new book to the series, plus releasing a second edition version of Cindy’s story as well.  Many of the second editions have new or updated covers, new or updated Author’s Notes, additional content, and for the first time ever, every single book has a print version, as well as an ebook.

There’s 23 books in total with Cindy’s Story.  Now I just have to figure out how to market them.  That’s the hard part. 😛