Air! I can breathe!

In all seriousness, it feels like I’ve been drowning in my writing the past few months. Ever since Eric and I wrapped up Kaiju Apocalypse III, it seems like my head has been underwater when it comes to writing. I may have burned myself out a bit (writing 4 books in 4 months will do that to anybody) and needed a break, but I proscribe to the “Monday through Friday, 8:00 – 3:00” writing schedule. You know, treating it like a job? It’s a good habit to get in to, quite frankly. But because of my schedule, and the fact that I mentally cringe anytime someone says “kaiju” around me, I’ve been writing utter dreck lately. This is while I’m trying to prepare the first two Christian Cole novels for publication (The Green Jewel and The Midnight Crew) and get a few short stories I owe to John Manning off to him (which I haven’t done yet, FYI), and help promote an anthology which just came out that I have the first story in (Terror By Gaslight, which has the first Tobias Fox story in it, Nightwalker).

That’s… a lot. I can see why my creativity has been flat-lining as of late.

Today, however, I woke up sort of refreshed. I didn’t sleep particularly well, but it felt as if a cloud over my motivation had lifted. Of course, I’m a little pissed off at the states of Colorado and Virginia right now, and hate and anger usually fuels my writing, so there is that. But for the first time in awhile I’m able to actually sit down and focus on writing itself, and not simply putzing around pretending to be a writer (other writers know what I’m talking about). It’s produced some decent material, most of which will make it into the final submitted piece.

I’ve also been informed that, due to the high sales of the Kaiju Apocalypse trilogy, combined with the surprising success of Murder World: Kaiju Dawn, I am no longer eligible to enter the “Writers of the Future” contest. Now, considering that I’ve never entered it any way, nor really considered entering seriously (those are some good damn writers, while I’m… meh), receiving that email was sort of surprising. I was wondering if it was a scam of some sort, but it seems to be legit, which brings me to the next question: who really gives a crap enough about me to be preemptive like that? Flattering, yeah, but spooky all the same.

I’ll have the second Murder World book (Murder World: Kaiju Dusk) ready by… Christmas? Which means publication in February? Hard to say right now. There is a lot going on in the publishing world that is making me a little nervous. And if I’m nervous, mid-listers who rely on writing as their only source of income have to be absolutely terrified. I know I would be, if I wasn’t so shallow and carefree in nature (heh).

No word on either Hand of God  or Wraithkin yet. I was hoping to hear something about the former by now, and I expect to hear something about the latter in the next few months. In the meantime, I’ve been toying around in the Wraithkin universe and am coming to realize that I created one complex universe, quite by accident. If someone ever says that I must really know politics to create such a nation like the Dominion of Man, I’m going to apologize and start laughing.

There was some other serious stuff I was thinking about talking about, then I remembered that I have an article due for the Mad Genius Club this Friday, so I figured I could save it for that. Nothing political (I think), more of a “this is cool” kind of thing. Who knows, maybe someone will learn something?

Won’t be me, though. I’m too stubborn to learn.