Not much new to report, but a couple of things worth talking about.

First, you may have noticed that I’ve titled this one as the update for March. I don’t know if that’s going to be “a thing” or not, but I do want to update the blog more regularly, if only to keep you all in the loop on what I’m up to. So, maybe I’ll make this a monthly thing?

The first bit of news to report is my recent appearance on Armand Rosamilia’s Arm Cast Dead Sexy Horror Podcast. As usual, those of you who follow my Facebook page have probably already heard about this, but it was a fun little interview. One reason it was so enjoyable is because Armand doesn’t do interviews in the traditional sense. Instead, it’s just two authors sitting and talking about whatever for an hour or so. We talked about writing (of course), as well as music, Dungeons & Dragons, his upcoming wedding, and all sorts of stuff. Go check it out!

This is a fun show!

Another thing worth mentioning: As you know, A Man With A Gun is finished. While I do have some beta readers currently going through the first draft, I would like to have more folks giving it a look and giving me their thoughts. If YOU would like to be a beta reader, hop over to my Contact page and drop me a line. Let me know what format you would need it in (PDF, Doc, Docx, etc.). I can’t promise that I’ll accept everyone as a beta reader, but let me know why you’d like to beta read A Man With A Gun and maybe you’ll be in the list!

In case you’re wondering, A Man With A Gun is a near future sci-fi story with some dystopian elements, along with some paranormal/horror and western bits. Yeah, it’s a genre-bender. The manuscript is currently around 87,000 words (a little longer than Frostwalker was) and it’s a raw first draft – not even really proofread.

My first drafts do tend to be pretty clean, but I’m sure there are plenty of typos. However, beta readers are free to provide as much or as little feedback as they’d like. If you want to hunt down typos, that’s fine. If you want to ignore them and focus on story issues, that’s cool, too. If you want to just give me a few sentences telling me what you liked and didn’t like, that’ll do pig. It’s entirely up to you how much feedback, and what type, you’d like to give.

Lastly, if you do beta read the manuscript and don’t finish it, I’d like to know where you lost interest. That’s important info!

That’s got most of the high points covered. In other news, as I mentioned in my last post, I planned to take two or four weeks off after finishing A Man With A Gun. Unfortunately, coming down with the flu pretty much meant that my whole “break” was spent lying in bed wishing I could die.

In addition to that, a computer I built a year ago suffered a motherboard failure, rendering it inoperable. This wouldn’t matter too much, but that computer contains the hard drive where most of my writing files are stored. No data has been lost, of course, but I can’t access the things I need to work on certain projects. This has limited my options for when I do go back to writing, but I don’t think it will be a major issue. A story idea is brewing already, and it’s just about ready to break forth, spewing onto the keyboard!

Other issues not related to writing have been popping up. Some of it due to the illness and some due to all the time I put into writing in the first part of the year. Things I set aside in January and February are having to be dealt with now.

It will be good to get back to writing, but I have to admit to a strange uneasiness as well. Sort of an indistinct anxiety hovering around the idea of diving back into the writing. It’ll work itself out eventually.

For now, that’s about got it. I look forward to hearing from you, so feel free to drop me a line – not just if you’re interested in beta reading, but if you’d just like to chat. The best part of this writing thing is hearing from readers!