The Aftermath of Thanksgiving & Editing

It’s been a heck of a week.  Starting early on we did the crazy twelve or thirteen hour drive to get Stephanie from college, survived that, moved on into Thanksgiving preparations.  Somewhere in the midst of this I continued to try to insinuate the editing of an older novel into the same time/space continuum as the writing of a new one.  Oh – and I’m also thinking about a story I have to write.  Perfect, huh?  So what do I remember from the last few days?

One thing I remember is that for the first time in my life the Thanksgiving Turkey still had a feather on it when we cooked it.  I don’t know why that stuck with me, but it was bizarre, like some old writer from years long gone had stabbed it with a quill pen and it stuck.

That started the strangeness.  Then the old vampire novel asserted itself.  It took over my creative energy and pretty much derailed my ability to continue with my Nanowrimo novel (thankfully well beyond it’s 50k at that point).  I was going to revise a couple of chapters a day, then write on the new book…but it didn’t work out that way.  Finally, unable to deny this failure any longer, I sat down today and finished revising the final four chapters of “Path of the Meteor,” which will probably get a new title soon.  I sent the revised 82k Vampire novel out to a group of test readers, and now I will get back to the task at hand – the brand new work.

Of course, there were other distractions.  I have begun to diversify a little, moving things into the new digital age, and this weekend I took another step forward with that.  I will be publishing my collection, Defining Moments, the one that was nominated for the Bram Stoker award, and that contained my award-winning story, “The Gentle Brush of Wings,” through Amazon in their Kindle store.  It should be available early next week.  The original book cost fifty dollars and was very limited in its release, so this should allow a much wider audience to find it.

Later in the week, three novellas will come out through Darkside Digital at the Horror Mall, “Roll Them Bones,” “The Not Quite Right Reverend Cletus J. Diggs & The Currently Accepted Habits of Nature,” and “My Eyes are Nailed, But I Still See.”  Similar formats, different venues.  Of course, I’ll be pushing them all equally, but it will be interesting to see which brings more new readers.

So now, I am off to work on “Heart of a Dragon” and get that book back on track, and eagerly awaiting the response of my readers group to Path of a Meteor.  Busy is a four letter word, but I’ll deal.

Tomorrow, though, back to college with the daughter, so I’ll be out most of the day.  Someday it will all calm down…I keep telling myself that.  I also tell myself Thanksgiving Turkeys shouldn’t have feathers, and we see where that got me.

-DNW