Ahhh! Hard to believe that January is already over! Dunno how you folks feel about it, but 2023 is racing by for me. Maybe it’s the week I lost due to awful food poisoning. That’s all kind of blur. While I’m aware I posted the last five parts of The Speed of our Passing earlier this month, since it was open content I just didn’t feel like I’d given my Patrons anything just for them. To solve that problem I wrote a new short horror story!
Both Sides of the Ice drops Monday.
It has recently occurred to me, as I looked over my previous work, that I had 5 snow/cold/ice themed horror stories. With Monday’s addition, I’ll have 6. One more, and I’ve got enough for a little horror pocketbook! There’s a printing service I’ve been eager to try out for these cool little books that remind me of the old stuff from the 70’s. So, next month Patrons will be getting an icy cold science-fiction horror story to fill out the chilling little collection! I’m tentatively calling the book Seven Red Icicles, and I hope to have it available by April!
The Tuft’s Cove Writers Group is hosting another DartSpeak Open Mike next week, on February 2nd, and I absolutely will be attending that. The last one was wonderful, the Dart Gallery is amazing, and I really hope I don’t have to drive through a blizzard to get there. But, if I have to, I have to. It’s worth it. Don’t know what I’ll be reading, but one of my story cards, that’s for sure.
I had my first vendor booth of the year at the Alderny Landing Farmer’s Market last week. It went wonderfully! Sold a really good variety of all my stuff, some of each book, lots of story cards, and the on-the-spot micro-fiction I typed out on Maxene was a hit! It was particularly captivating to any of the kids that came by and I wound up writing a whole bunch of little stories about escaping zoo animals, space lacrosse, and thieving teachers. Very fun!
I’m glad it did well because January is, typically, a bad season for that sort of thing. But since it worked out this time, in the off-season, it’ll likely work all year, which is encouraging. I’ll be there on February 18th next month.
The bulk of my writing has been going into Witchbough Daughters. What’s currently on Patreon is about 30k words. I’ve gone back into those original scenes, restructured them for a longer book, and added 25k worth of new and supporting content. The whole thing is built very differently now, has altered some of the characters significantly, and has a lot more to it. I could release some of it, but I don’t want to just drop scenes around randomly onto the Patreon. I expect to have the draft 100% done in the next 9-10 weeks. Once that happens, I’ll re-release it all in an organized fashion, 1 chapter a week, for the entire thing. Expect that to start in March and run for as many weeks as the book has chapters.
While the book draft is releasing, I’ll work on editing it all and creating a final draft for publishing which will, hopefully, launch right around the same time as the last chapter drops. Final book launch sometime mid-summer.
February is also a month that my Posty Patrons will be getting a new quarterly story card in the mail. I have them all printed and ready to go. This one is a bit grim, but hey, they can’t all have happy endings! My Pulpy Patrons will be getting their own, one of a kind, personalized mini-stories as well, mailed with the cards, and hand typed out. I’m really excited to be doing those for people and my brain has been dreaming up what strange little thing I’m going to write for each patron.
So far, even with the poisoning, 2023 is off to a fantastic start! I hope everyone is having a good year so far. I know these darker, colder, gloomier months are my flavor, but not everyone enjoys this grim time of year. Hang in there folks! Time is unrelenting and slides along faster than you think. Spring will be here soon! While we wait, I’m gonna keep writing and fighting deadlines.
Thanks again to all my patrons! I’m so glad for each and every one of you and would never have the motivation I have, or learned the writing habits I’ve formed, without you. You’re the best!