I'm here, I swears.

It's been awhile. I'm not ignoring you, I swear, blog of mine. Well, I kinda am. I used to have a program that came with my laptop that allowed me to just type a post and it would do it without logging in, but I haven't been able to find it online again.

I'm nearing the end of my re-imagining of my second novel. I just hit my 15k goal and am pushing past it. Listening to short-story podcasts, rocking out to several different bands, and overall spending most of my unemployment searching for retail managerial jobs and writing like crazy.

Is it just me or did this Christmas sneak up on everyone? It hasn't really felt like it's winter here in Oklahoma. There's been a couple ice days, but nothing really that big. No snow, some rain, and maybe three days that have dipped below 32 degrees. Kinda weak.

If you want to jump onto some of those short-story podcasts, I've been enjoying the following:

Podcastle - Fantasy (http://podcastle.org/)

Pseudopod - Horror (http://pseudopod.org/)

Escape Pod - Science Fiction (http://escapepod.org/)

Drabblecast - Weird Stuff (http://web.me.com/normsherman/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html)

Knee Deep in Words

I think it's interesting that in the past two weeks I have gotten the bug to write words. That, with the latest events of my life, I'm now abuzz with the need to write. To finish my second novel, to twist, warp it, into something that exists, even if it's not good.

I just passed 275 pages into the novel, while I have no idea how long it's going to be, what twists it will take. The truth about the novel is that I have the general feeling of where it will go, but this was originally a two book series that I was trying to stretch out to three.

The problem came with that I had introduced too many characters and gods and a ton of events and characters I'd have to cut away that I froze for six months on what to do next. Eventually, I realized I should just push, wrap all my ideas into a workable project and then dissect it and bring it all about. Maybe it's the wrong way to go about it, but it's what works.

But now that I've thrown myself head first into it, I am losing a bit of the control - some of the events are falling away so that my ending is in flux. I'm not sure what it will come out to be, whether or not they'll end in 20k/30k or even 50k words. I'm enjoying it thus far, even if it is a bit middling right now.

Fifty thousand words in and no idea where to stop.

Wish me luck!