Holy Shit, It's 2016

It's been a very long time since I updated this blog. Part of my problem is all of the crap that's been going on. For a while there, I was getting home from work and then having to work on one thing or another, run errands, and so forth, until it was time to crash so that I can get up in the morning to do it all again. Part of it is that I just haven't felt much like writing.

I hate that feeling, by the way. It's the feeling you get when you sit down to write, but instead of the words just bubbling from the tips of your fingers, you're having to drag them out, clawing and kicking. It gets better, of course. Writing is not much different from a job that you enjoy doing. When you are in the middle of it, it's great. Sometimes it's hard to stop. Once you stop, though, the longer you stay away, the longer you dread returning. You know that it's going to take time to get back into the right frame of mind, and you know it's not going to be fun at first.

Here's the status of some of my projects:

Double Helix

I've been making some progress on the next chapter. I had most of a chapter written, but didn't like the result. Sometimes I find myself writing sex scenes out of a sense of obligation to the reader to deliver the on the "erotic" part of erotic fiction, but then I remind myself that with science fiction, the story really has to come first, and most readers will forgive a bit less titillation  if the story and sense of wonder are otherwise carried forward. So I cut the two somewhat length sex scenes and went for plot development instead. I'm probably about halfway through, which means that I could be done this weekend or next month.

In related news, I've decided to post the story here as a serial. This will be the edited version of the first book with shorter chapters that I submitted to the Amazon store. I intend to edit down the chapters that I have written thus far in the second book to match, incorporating some needed editing and rewrites as well. I plan to start posting each chapter a day or two apart, starting later this week.

Cybercock

I love this little series, and I really need to get going on it. I'm going for novella length with this one, though it might turn into a short novel. I'll have to see. It incorporates a lot of the ideas I have about how technology will change our experience of the world, and I feel like I've only scratched some of that surface so far. I won't promise anything yet, but if I can deliver the next chapter of Double Helix soon, I'm thinking I'll be ready to flip back over to this story for another chapter.

Unnamed Erotic Fantasy Story

Catchy title, right?

This is the story of a barbarian warrior who is captured by strange travelers from an empire across the sea. Hoping to take advantage of the mercy shown to him by the immortal empress, he devotes himself to learning the ways of these people and delves into the secrets of the empress' powerful magic.

I got a good ways into this story before someone spilled a drink on my laptop keyboard. I ordered a new keyboard, which took about three weeks to ship in from Hong Kong (wtf?). Anyway, by then I had lost the spark of interest and was in the middle of various disasters in the making, so I only got about 6000 words in. Still, I transferred it of the laptop's drive and into Google Docs, which was a good thing, because someone again spilled their drink on my laptop keyboard. Yeah, I was pissed.

I'm going to edit the hell out of this one and probably post it in serial format here exclusively. If people like it (and I ever get around to really promoting myself), I may put it up on Amazon.


That's about it for now. Check back here for further updates.