Severed Press will be publishing my book.
I’m pretty stoked. From everything I’ve read, they are an amazing publishing company and best of all their covers are works of art. (Yeah, I’m shallow like that. Nothing sinks a book faster than poor covers… except poor writing!)
Woohoo!
People love pictures, so I figured I’d throw some up and update it from time to time. If you’re on a computer, they are on the right side of the screen now. If you’re on a phone/ipad/fire/whatever, they’re probably at the bottom.
Yay pictures!
(And I even threw one in of me showing some leg from back in college… before I learned how to squat with heavy weights.)
So an update of sorts.
On the writing front – Things are great. I’ve edited the entire novel once more, and I’m back to the FGB. (Final Great Battle.) I suppose you could finish a book without a big fight at the end, but that seems sort of anti-climatic to me. And certainly not the sort of book I’d write.
Anyways, that’s the most exhausting thing about this book and the last part to be finished. The culmination of a dozen characters journeys into a bloodbath of violence and mayhem is always a draining affair.
But hey, JRR Tolkein did it several times. Of course his battles were more like, “And so-and so got knocked on the head. Then woke up after the battle was over.”
But the movies, they got it right. Lots of action!
On the publishing front – I dunno. It’s moving along at a snails pace. But having a sequel finished and polished is a big deal for any publisher. It shows that:
A. I can write.
B. That I will continue writing.
C. That I am getting better the more I write.
D. I want to make both the publisher and myself, very, very, very rich.
All of this makes me a better risk for any publisher. But dang, I’m tired of waiting. It’s been almost a year since I finished West of Prehistoric, and it’s been difficult reading such great reviews of the book from Beta Readers, only to wait to publish it as I finish the sequel. But the good news is that I expect to be done in a couple weeks and sending the sequel out to the Beta Readers.
On the personal front – COVID-19 sucks. Luckily, I am still working fulltime, but I miss my friends, miss my gym, and miss the booming economy we had. (But I’ve great faith in Trump’s ability to get us back to boomin’ again.) We’ve settled nicely into our house, we even bought a bunch of canvas prints for the walls and got them hung. So it feels like our house now. Oh, and we got a new grill for it. Heck yeah, tasty meat.
I hope everyone is staying safe and well.
Wash your filthy hands and keep the cooties at bay!
I don’t know what to say about 2019… I suppose it’s a mixed bag.
One hand, we bought a new house and are currently finishing moving into it. On the other hand, I spent the majority of the year dealing with Post Concussive Syndrome – which was a royal bitch to get over. (Long story, and long over due for a post. But it was shooting related. I’ll write something up in 2020 for it.)
Anyways, New House:
It’s pretty nice, comes complete with a finished underground bunker… I mean.. basement. (For keeping all my shooting gear!) My goals for next year? Finish moving in. Sell our old house. Buy a Barrett .50 cal and a helicopter with the proceeds.
On the writing front, which is why this blog exists – for my expected future fame and fortune, pretty good. Even with brain damage I managed to finish a book, get several publishing offers, AND write 80,000 words into the sequel(Goal is 110,000). I’m a bit bummed that I didn’t finish the sequel by the end of this year, that was a big goal of mine. But, I had BRAIN DAMAGE. I think I’ve accomplished a lot all things considered. My goals for next year? Publish the first, finish and publish the second, and hopefully finish the third.
That’s a lot of writing, but I REALLY want to write a follow up trilogy based in the 1920’s. You know, the good old days, when Thompson Machine Guns could be ordered in the mail.
On the shooting front for 2020, goals include getting a new safe. Mine is full. Also, it’s been years since I’ve shot competitively, and I miss the camaraderie of beating other people. I think I’d like to try and get back into that and shoot a few matches. It used to be a lot of fun when my dad would come out and compete also, but alas, his semi-retired job now has him working almost every single Saturday. So, I dunno about that. But I’d love to shoot more next year. Also I just renewed my Concealed Carry Permit for the third time. Over ten years now, never needed it. That’s pretty good. Hope I never do. I’ve enough gray hairs coming in as it is from my kids. But I feel like my skills have taken a severe blemishing over the past few years, and I’d like to shine them a bit. Competition is great for that and just plain old trigger time… more of it!
I also haven’t gotten to go to church much this year. With everything going on, and several strong sicknesses running rampant through my house, oh and our three year old not sleeping…grrr… Sunday mornings and church have been put on the back burner, and I miss that.
Nay, I need that.
But still – There’s one thing in particular that I’m grateful for this past year. With all the hardships and blessings, I’ve grown closer to God than I’ve ever been before. It’s wonderful. And I look forward to growing more in the new year.
Speaking of which, I wish you all great health and happiness and blessings in the new year. Thank you for reading my blog, keeping me on my toes with comments, and giving me likes when I post something worth reading. It’s ego-stroking and keeps me going. 🙂 And if you can’t tell, blogging doesn’t come naturally to me, a lot of the time I struggle to think of something worth writing about when I’d rather just be writing a story out.
But as I said earlier, future fame and prosperity demands that I have a blog as a new author. And I look forward to continuing on this adventure together into 2020.
Thank you all and God Bless.
Saw it, bleh…
James Cameron has failed us greatly.
Personally, I enjoyed Terminator: Genesys when it came out. That’s the only one I thought worth watching since the nearly perfect T2: Judgement Day. I thought it was fantastic and that Emilia Clarke made a terrific Sarah Connor. But it did poorly at the box office, and the reboot failed to take off so it died a sad box office death.
Shame.
But James Cameron comes along, picks up the mantle a few years later, and instead of giving us something comparable with T2, he gives us a big glop of woke, feminist mayonnaise.
Needlessly.
Because Sarah Connor is an iconic heroine. She’s the living embodiment of woman badassdom. She may have started slinging ice cream in a cafe, but once her unborn son’s life was at stake and the weight of humanity resting on her shoulders, she got buff, got armed, and proactively started seeking out ways to protect her son and humanity.
Awesome.
Then came along this T:6 movie which is supposed to be T:3 replacing the earlier horrible T:3 with the wimpy John Connor played by Nick Stahl. (Mr. “Oh look at me, I carry a paintball gun even though human cyborgs from the future tried to kill my mom and me.) So it’s a confusing mess because they just keep rebooting the franchise over and over. -sigh-
But Dark Fate. Yeah, according to it’s Director, Tim Miller:
“If you’re at all enlightened, she’ll play like gangbusters. If you’re a closet misogynist, she’ll scare the f*** out of you, because she’s tough and strong but very feminine,” Miller said. “We did not trade certain gender traits for others; she’s just very strong, and that frightens some dudes. You can see online the responses to some of the early sh** that’s out there, trolls on the internet. I don’t give a f***.” Source
Right, well I reckon all the knuckle dragging, woman despising, Internet Trolls stayed at home because it was ‘so scary’, so it’s a colossal flop and gonna lose the studio around $100 million.
Where to begin the plot spoilingness?
Oh I know…
Who told James Cameron it was a great idea to kill off a young John Connor in the first two minutes of the movie?
In today’s woke and inclusive Hollywood, we can’t have a MAN SAVING THE WORLD. We need a new heroine, a woman whose not giving birth to the savior… lame plot twist, she is the savior. GASP! And she gives a terrible speech about it.
Oh, and she’s Hispanic. So they sneak across American’s border into the EVIL BORDER PATROL’s CLUTCHES. Oh my!
And Legion? Legion… that’s the new Skynet. Because Skynet was defeated. Nevermind that Skynet has one of the most iconic villain names ever – let’s make something new up. A new threat, because humanity never learns. (Well, that’s believable, but still lame.)
And let’s send a female psuedo-super warrior back in time. No chauvinistic protectorate Kyle Reese to impregnate the weak and helpless Sarah Connor! But, even though she looks like she weighs a buck-ten, let’s augment her and make her super strong. Except she needs an insulin syringe every couple of plot points to make it seem like she has a weakness.
But we get Linda Hamilton! YAY! This should save the franchise!
Nope.
She’s a haggard alcoholic… because it’s been 28 years since she melted Arnold into a vat of molten metal. And she’s pissed, probably because her son was killed in the first two minutes for Hollywood’s wokeness that loves destroying beloved male heroes like Luke Skywalker and James Bond. (Oh haven’t you heard? I envy you. The new Bond movie is going to suck.)
But she spent the past two decades, off screen, killing Terminators that keep getting sent back in time by the defeated Skynet. (I know, weird, dumb, lame, etc.) So now, of course, she just drinks and blows things up and pretty much just sucks. But she’s so good at killing things, she’s really surprised when the new Legion sent Terminator is really hard to kill and can split into two Terminators. (The math still doesn’t add up though, three heroines and two male shaped Terminators… I thought women were the greater sex?)
Anyways. She just swears a bunch and has trust issues.
So, Arhhhnold!
We get him at least. Yeah, apparently a future killing machine sent back in time to kill John Connor becomes ‘Carl The Drape Salesman’ after his mission is finished. If you haven’t seen the movie and just read that, you’d think I made it up. Nope. It’s true. A Terminator becomes a Drape Salesman after completing its mission.
Never mind that it’s enemy is Humanity, and somewhere in it’s core functions should be something like:
At least in T:3 the Terminator had a hit list of Human’s that needed to be wiped out.
Anyways, I shouldn’t bash movies, or directors, because who knows – maybe Tim Miller and James Cameron will want to do a movie about my books. (That’d be okay. I’ll let you for enough monies.)
But I’m thinking maybe old school and get John Milius, the director of Red Dawn, Conan, Wind and the Lion, Uncommon Valor, etc.
At any rate, not every movie can be a winner, and this one ain’t a winner.
Gunpowder and Ink! 