Summer Surprise is live.

So, it took me an extra two months to get it done, and I hate to admit it, it was editing the audio. When I finally got down to it, it only took me about four hours to get that done and another four to divide up the episodes and do the tagging and stuff to get it ready for podiobooks.com.

I want to thank everyone who is downloading this novella. 24 hours after it went live I've had over 250 episodes downloaded and another 150 of 'The Price of Friendship'.

What is coming?

Here I go changing my mind again. My most recent plan was to finish writing my Nanowrimo. I hit 50k words in plenty of time, but because of other commitments during the holidays, I'm still working on finishing. I'm close. I'm at 65k and have, maybe, 5k to go. But there is a novella that runs concurrently with it, which I had started in September. It also has 5k to go. I'm thinking of combining them and making it one story to introduce the world to the Galactic Battle Base. I have a lot of short stories which take place there.

However, I think I may need to shift attention to the third and final book of The Price of Friendship. I got some good ideas for it as I've but this novella together.

I'll not mention my Teenage Vampire Love Story for The Guys. I thought I was ready to submit it to 'Paper Publishers' but after I had the first three chapters reviewed at Baycon, I see it needs more work. On top of that, the things that have happened in 'Summer Surprise' I need to alter some of the events in the Vampire story, and how Chad and Amy act in their short appearances in that novel.

Please let me know what you think of these stories. And, especially if you like them, please give me a short review on Podiobooks.com or iTunes.

Thanks a bunch.

Novaljoe.

What's going on....

As I've said in the past, what I need to do as a writer to further establish myself is to get more work published and available to the readers. I thought I was going to do that be rewriting "The King's Shoemaker". In retrospect, I'm finding it wasn't a simple rewrite. I've bogged down at 70k words and finding it boring. If it bores me, I'm sure you'll stop reading/listening, so when I get back to it, and finish it, there will be at least one big edit before recording.

While that was going on I switched back to finishing "Summer Surprise" and getting it recorded. The story is done and I really want to get it posted. But by the time the kids are in bed and it's quite enough to record, I'm pooped.

I wrote a story for the Masters of Macabre contest at www.HorrorAddicts.net and won that competition. Yup. I'm the master.

I wrote a Thanksgiving murder mystery for a competition which was rejected within a day of submission. I've been debating submitting that to other magazines or putting it up at Smashwords.

When I last ground to a halt on "Shoemaker" I started another Galactic Battle Base story, that I really love. I'm within 5K words of finishing that one (at about 28K words) but had to start a story for the Editor's Issue of Flagship Magazine at www.FlyingIslandPress.com. It's coming along ok, but I really have to think about it because it's in a shared universe with the other editors.

On top of that, Nanowrimo is coming up. I'm outlining heavily for that. My story will be about the parents of the boy in my GBB novella. They go out on a top secret mission to an uncharted star system and don't know if there son will suffer another seizure, which will have the potential to kill him.

So, in the next twenty days I need to 1) Finish recording and editing "Summer Surprise", 2) Finish "Human Magnetism" - the Battle Base Novella, 3) Finish my Flagship short story, and 4) Finalize my outline for Nanowrimo.

Wish me luck. If you do Nano and I'm not already on your buddy list, and you on mine, buddy me and I'll buddy you back.