Hey. Long time no see. Man, I haven’t posted here in forever. And I don’t think I’ve really said anything of import on this version of the website at all. I used to blog almost daily, when I was writing first thing in the morning before work, I would wrap up the morning with a quick recap of the work I’d done that day. I didn’t give specifics or story details or anything, but I would tease out a few things sometimes with pictures. For example, if I mentioned a roller coaster in the story, I would post a picture of a roller coaster and say, “Today I wrote about:”
I don’t know why I stopped doing that.
Then for a while I was wrapping up each day with a motivational post, and eventually I collected those in my book Doing it Write.
For a very long time, though, I haven’t bothered to come on here and write about what I’ve been writing. Most days, by the time I stopped writing, I only did so because time was up and I had to start getting ready for work. Now that I’m writing after work, I still haven’t bothered because by the time I’m done writing for the day, it’s almost time for my wife, Kara, to come home from work and I like to be downstairs to meet her when she gets here, so I would have to cut short the story-related work that day, new words or editing, to write a blog post about what I’ve been working on. Or I could just keep adding new words and/or editing. Which is what I’ve been choosing to do with that time.
But today, even though I spent the day editing the first draft of the upcoming 13th issue of my super hero comic book in prose, Invasion Agents, I did find a stopping point that made sense and I decided to get on here and say a few words.
I read recently that the best way for a writer to build an audience is to blog regularly. I honestly don’t know how true that is, with Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, I think there are a ton of easier ways to connect with your audience. But I do have a website and that website does have a blog page and I know when I see a blog that hasn’t been posted to in a year, I just assume the writer is dead or no longer writing and since I’m neither of those things, I really should make more of an effort to be visible here, especially since I’m not on Facebook, my Twitter is occasional at best and my Instagram is devoted mostly to what comics I’m reading, what records I’m listening to, and pictures of Kara on our weekly dinner dates.
So. What I’m currently working on is editing. I’m editing, like I said, the first draft of the 13th issue of this supposedly-monthly series (year one was monthly, but I didn’t get anything else written that year and that is unacceptable, so this time, as I work on year two, I’m going to keep to as regular a schedule as I can, but not at the cost of getting anything else written) while waiting for the beta readers to finish with my latest Holiday Horror short story, “President’s Day”, which, at 24,000 words, isn’t so short.
Man, if you grew up on 80s slasher movies like I did, you’re going to LOVE this story. More on that later.
Kara will be home soon, and I missed her today, so I’m going down to see her. We’ll catch up more later.
–CDM.