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New Ramblings

Monday Evening Ramblings

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I went to Chattanooga to spend Thanksgiving with my friends Leslie and James, who were gracious enough to invite me down. We had a great time and ate way too much food. It was probably my most enjoyable Thanksgiving in 8-9 years. Planning to go back and spend some more time with them soon, probably before Christmas.

Friday was my 44th birthday. Got to go out to eat with my parents and then spent the evening with a friend. Probably my most relaxing and enjoyable birthday in 8-9 years, too. No stress, no drama, no nonsense. Just good food, good conversation, and good pumpkin pie.

I’m currently up to Chapter 11 on book five. For those of you who don’t follow me on Facebook, Chapter 10 might be the most intense writing of my career. Hopefully, my editor and beta readers will agree with me that book five is the best book in the series. That’s the reason why I’m so infrequent on the blog. When I’m in the middle of a book like this, I get serious tunnel vision and don’t write on much else.

Right now, my thoughts and prayers are with all of my friends and loved ones in Sevier County. The fires are unbelievable and many people I care about are under a mandatory evacuation from their homes. We desperately need rain in East Tennessee. Not sure I’ve ever seen it this dry here, not even during that terrible drought in the 80s. November is usually one of our wettest months, and so far, we’ve had .2 of an inch of rain this month.

That’s all for now. Hope everyone is safe and well.

New Ramblings

Sunday Evening Ramblings – 11/13/16

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I’ve got a new book coming soon. It’s a humorous look at life in jail because it’s much better to laugh at misfortune than cry. So far, the feedback I’ve received is that it’s laugh-out-loud funny. A word of warning, though: this book is NSFW. It’s so profane it’s probably not safe for home either, so read at your own discretion.

Here’s a brief snippet:

So to spice up your Tuesday afternoon, you chug a fifth of whiskey and let happen what may. At some point, it becomes imperative to check on your elderly neighbor who you haven’t seen in a couple of weeks. He might be in danger, you realize, so you charge across the neighborhood in denim shorts and tennis shoes. What could possibly go wrong? you reason as you proceed to bang on every door and window, calling his name and growing more fearful with each passing minute. When the cops arrive after several calls from other concerned neighbors, you realize your wallet is still at home, so you attempt to run back there to retrieve it. Three Taser jolts, a dose of pepper spray, and a two minute beating later, you find yourself in the back of a patrol car charged with two counts of Aggravated Assault on an Officer and one count of Aggravated Burglary, and you are heading to jail. You’ve never been in trouble before and have no idea what to expect inside.

Never fear! This educational guide will give you an overview of 101 things you need to know about being an inmate in a county jail, so while you wait to be fingerprinted, photographed, and booked in, you can relax a little and enjoy yourself instead of fretting over when you’ll get to see an attorney.

lockup-101-4

New Ramblings

Saturday Afternoon Ramblings – 11/5/16

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If you’re a fan of my series The Brotherhood of Dwarves, here’s an update for you. Currently, I’m in the middle of chapter 9 of 14 total, so the rough draft is over halfway complete. There is a lot going on in this book as the war erupts and the Great Empire’s hold on the Ghaldeon lands crumbles. All of the plot points that came to a head in book four are now boiling over in this installment. So far, I’m pleased with how the story is coming together.

This series has been in my head for about 14 or 15 years, and I don’t have words for how it feels to finally get this last book down on the page. There have been so many setbacks and obstacles along the way that often I wondered if I would ever be able to get the whole story told, but somehow, I’ve been able to keep it alive in my addlepated mind. Not sure how I’ll feel once this book is actually finished, but I’m sure there will be lots of mixed emotions.

I’m not sure if Philip will be editing this book, too. We haven’t discussed it recently, so I’m just not sure if he has the time or the inclination to do it. For my part, I hope he does because I trust his judgment and we seem to work well together. If he chooses not to, I do have a couple of backup editors in mind, so the book will get a thorough polishing before it hits the market. Even if it means delaying the release a little bit longer, this book will be honed to a fine edge before it’s published.

It feels good to be productive. It’s bringing me a sense of normalcy (well, normalcy for me; probably not what most people would consider normal) and helping me to get a foundation back under my feet. Once I finish this series, I can’t wait to start on my next projects, but that’s another post for another day.

That’s all for now.