Well, well, well. It’s been some time, yes? I’m happy to announce that I did, in fact, survive what I am officially calling the Summer of Insanity. I finished five classes (and mostly with A’s, woo), worked two jobs, and I’m only 20 pages from finishing the final draft of THE FOREST AWAKENS. Which means submission time has come again! I’m ready for a whole new load of rejections. Yep, I sure am. Sorta.

Anyway, Summer is over and I graduate from University of Texas at Arlington  in December. You might think, ack, graduating soon, time to freak out, but I’m only taking two classes. After the Summer I had? This is going to be a breeze. And that’s good because I have a bunch of new projects to work on. I have a couple websites already lined up that should be fun. I got a buddy who wants to record an album with me. And, of course, I have a completely brilliant new novel to write.

So I hope nobody missed the blog too much. I know you guys were checking daily with frowning faces. Don’t worry, I won’t make you admit it. I have all kinds of new adventures to tell you about, new podcasts to release, all-in-all we have some stuff to catch up on.

Hey everyone, I just wanted to get on and say that I won’t be updating the Blog and Podcast as regularly for a little bit. With Summer approaching my time is going to be incredibly limited. I have taken on more than usual for this time of year. I want to still focus on my writing and programming amidst my wild schedule, so that means my blog is going to be slower to update. I’ll still stop in from time to time with updates and fun things I’ve found. I am about done with another website to share with you guys.

I will be updating my activity bars on the front page while I work. The last set of edits for THE FOREST AWAKENS is coming along nicely! While I’ve been plotting the next book I was planning to write, another has crept into my interest. So now I’m plotting two books to see which I want to work on next. I think this new idea would be much faster, so it might win out.

I’m also pretty active on Twitter, so if you want updates you can find me there!

Around the start of the new year I added a new update bar for the front page to keep track of this year’s writing goal. It occurred to me the other day that I forgot to EXPLAIN what the darn thing means. It’s really very simple. In years past I have made complex writing goals and I found them stressful.

So instead I took a different approach. I looked at how many words a day it would take to accomplish a book being fully written and edited. I decided on 500 words, enough to fully write and edit a book that is around 75,000 words, and then to still have enough left over to work on my podcast stories.

I get my words two ways:

1. The old fashioned way, you know, actual writing.
2. 3 drafts of edits are equal to the number of words I wrote.

This basically means that the final draft of a 2,000 word story is worth 4,000 words toward my yearly goal (2K written, 2K edited). As I expected, I’m a bit behind on my percentage but I’m not stressing it. Summer is usually when I get a big bulk of my yearly writing done (I just have more time for it). Those days I tend to do far more than 500 words so it will make up for a small bit of slacking the rest of the year.

I have come be nervous about January. Every year it seems to be “surprisingly” busy. This year was even more fun because I work five days a week, and the other two I’m trying to finish my degree so I can teach English. Perhaps it was a bad time to try a new writing style, or maybe I was just having a hard time in general. Who can say?

In any case, I’m glad I stuck with REWARDED WITH A CURSE. I probably never would have gone back to a 1st person story if I’d given up. I even think this turned out to be a pretty interesting idea. So, tomorrow we’re getting back into things with podcast story #9!

When the leader of a small group of wizards discovers the existence of an ancient ritual said to grant vast amounts of power, greed and darkness follow in the wake of its discovery. Roger Gardwhin, a middle-aged man trying to maintain a normal life outside of his Circle of wizards, is forced to take part against his will. As the day of the ritual approaches, he realizes just what he is getting himself into.

Check back tomorrow for part one!

Next Tuesday we’ll be starting the ninth podcast story. I’m challenging myself yet again with this one. I’ve never tried to write a 1st person story before so it seemed time. It’s not that I dislike them. It’s more that I think 3rd person limited is more fun when writing fantasy. I love having multiple characters telling a story, hiding certain things, revealing others. It’s a delicate game you have to play when writing them. 1st person is a bit more straight forward. Still, since I’ve never done it so I figured why not?

Next Tuesday will start REWARDED WITH A CURSE. This is the tale of a small group of wizards living in the modern world. When the leader of this group discovers the existence of an ancient ritual said to grant vast amounts of power, greed and darkness seem to follow in the wake of its discover. Roger Gardwhin, a middle-aged man who tries to maintain a normal life outside of his magical group, is forced to take part despite many misgivings. As the day of the ritual approaches, he’s realizing just what he is getting himself into.

I hope you join us next week to start the new story!

I hope everyone has a fantastic Christmas. I feel like we haven’t stopped moving this entire holiday season, from Thanksgiving until now, but I expect (or maybe just hope) that things will be very different after this week. I’ll be out of classes until the second week in January or so and it will just be regular ‘ol working for me. That’ll be a nice change. It will also mean two solid weeks of some hardcore writing. Huzzah! I expect I’ll be able to finish The Forest Awakens during those two weeks. And also get a few new podcast episodes written. *fingers crossed*

Christmas has be FUN so far too though. We had my wife’s grandmother for our traditional pre-Christmas chicken enchiladas last night. Yum yum! We opened our presents and got to talk. I think it says a lot about me that my wife bought me a medieval lego set, I got her the new Donkey Kong Country Wii game. Hehe. Today we’re off to the family ranch to spend the remainder of the time with most of my family. That means there will be a whole lot of kids there. There is nothing like doing Christmas morning with a whole lot of little children.

I hope you guys all have a good Xmas too. Feel free to let me know what you’ll be up to! I always like a good Xmas story. And for fun, this is a trailer for the game. Cause it looks awesome and we can’t wait to play it!

The Lands of Draknor is something that has been rolling around in my head for a very long time. I still remember the very first short story I wrote in that world. Ashthranh, mercenary for the Gods, and a murderous task. It was a very simplistic tale back then, written by a 16-year-old Sophomore in high school, but it started something much bigger. Over time that simple plot changed a great deal, but the main protagonist, Ashthran the Dryth, never did. Working on these podcasts, many of them being set at various periods in time in the world of Draknor, has really made me want to get back into the creation of this world. And so I think I will. I am getting close to finishing the final draft of The Forest Awakens, so I believe my assassin novel will have to be put off yet again to make way for something much more significant to me.

Check back next Tuesday for the full audio of Marked By The Dragon!

Something I’ve wanted to do more lately is work on a little artwork to go along with each of my stories. I don’t know how successful this will be, I’m not a very good artist. But I have a lot of fun drawing. And I figure, like writing, practice can only make me better. I wanted Nyxor to be a little bigger I think, but I like how this came out.

This a one of the Draknor shields that might be found where Marked By The Dragon takes place, in the holy city of Alindrak. The symbol is of a dragon, Nyxor, eating her own tail. Based upon the oldest known symbol, the Uroborus. It’s one of my favorite symbols.

I’m looking forward to going back a bit and trying my hand at some artwork for older stories as well. Hopefully it all ends well. If nothing else, at least I’ll get to have some fun with it.