May 18, 2018

So ... it’s way past time for an update, and this has to start with an apology for being inactive here for so long. It was due to a variety of factors, including job schedule, a string of unfortunate circumstances (including a number of computer problems, the most recent of which was a Windows Update gone so completely awry that the only option I had was to reset my computer, which wiped all my programs and reinstalled Windows), repeated bouts of writer’s block, and some rather hefty depression issues which I still haven’t beaten. Aside from keeping up with a couple of fanfiction pieces, however sporadically, as far as writing is concerned I very nearly just ... gave up.

I won’t go into much detail so I don’t look like I’m whining. I’ll just say that my one success at getting published hasn’t been selling and due to some issues with the publisher I’ve decided to wait for the contract to expire and see if I can find another home for the book. None of my indie works were selling, so I took them all down and have been thinking over a few ideas on other ways to publish them. I’ve been considering trying a few things with them on my Patreon page, but haven’t settled on anything concrete yet.

The only thing my officially-published novel led to, a short story in a sci-fi/paranormal romance anthology that I’ve probably mentioned before, was a small success in that I liked the story and characters enough to expand it into a full novel, Uncharted Territory. But the anthology sold so poorly that the publisher took it down from Amazon. But at least I’m getting a full novel out of it, which I didn’t even have a story for until I was invited to submit one for the anthology, so hooray for that. If nothing goes horribly wrong, this will turn into a whole series of books.

So here’s where I start trying to be positive. After Uncharted Territory was derailed for so long, I decided to give it a rewrite and start posting the updated chapters here, partly to refresh my memory of where the story was going. Then I started thinking about the previous short novel, Game Over, which introduced the crew of the ship UT’s Kolya Mason joins. That shorter work is essentially the first book in the series, so I decided to give it another polish and add a bit of new content and post it here to see if it gains any traction. I’ve gone through the first five chapters, so far, and will start posting them shortly. Once the full book is up here, I’ll get back to work on Uncharted Territory.

As I mentioned above, I’m still not out of the woods as far as the depression problem goes, but I realized that if I don’t just dive back in and get back to work on these books, they’ll never get finished. I’ll do my best not to drop off the radar again, and to (as the late, great Monty Oum liked to say) keep moving forward.