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Let me pull this blog off the shelf for a moment, blow the dust off it. *Cough! *cough! And scrub the rust from the once shiny surface–see if I can’t get the engine of writing started once more.

Allow me a moment to explain what has happened since 2018. Or, in the words of Inigo Montoya, “No, is too much. Let me sum up.”

I took a promotion at my job. I had been working with an agency supporting developmentally disabled adults, and I moved from being an Assistant Manager in 2018 to running the home as the Residence Manager. What I did not anticipate at this time was the toll it would take on either my energy level nor my creativity. A few years later, in May of 2020, I received a potentially life-changing text from Cary Solomon, a director and producer of such films as God’s Not Dead, Unplanned, and Nefarious. Cary was interested in my novel Nicholas to turn into a feature-length film. At the same time, he was also interested in developing material for television, and wondered if I had anything. I immediately pivoted from writing novels to writing screenplays for television, and I lobbed several pitches at him. One of them he took real interest in. It was a story called Independence. More on that in a moment.

I wound up writing upwards of eight scripts for Independence, with a plan to develop several more. This took several months and involved a lot of back and forth with editing and suggestions in my efforts to get the project green lit. During this time, he and his partner Chuck relocated from Hollywood due to its impending demise to Dallas, Texas. While there, they felt compelled to change up their business model and move into distribution more than production, with the unfortunate result that my project had to be shelved.

You can imagine my disappointment: to be so close to the fabled brass ring!

Another development: In August of 2022 I was invited to come and serve as the interim pastor for a church I had interned at over twenty years prior. This church, Christ’s Church Guilderland, had once been running with several hundred attending, but between the pandemic and other challenges, had seen their membership dwindle to less than a hundred. After praying about it intensely and discussing the matter with some seasoned saints and advisors, I took on the roll of interim pastor at this church, traveling from my home in Rochester to Albany, New York each week for many weeks in a row. Others helped out now and again, but my energies were now being split between serving as a full time residence manager and also as a weekend relief preacher at a church three and a half hours away.

Finally, in September of 2024, the church agreed to bring me aboard full time, and in December of that same year I left the job with the group home.

I’m still commuting, and now that things have settled to a dull roar, I have finally begun writing again. Oh, and I left something out. After Cary informed me they wouldn’t be able to develop Independence, I took at look at the eight and a half scripts I had written. And I really liked them. I really like the characters I’ve created and the whole world and scenes and everything about them. I decided the best thing to do was to rewrite the scripts into short-form novels and release them myself.

The thing about a script that is different from a novel is primarily two-fold: you only get to describe what you can see and what you can hear. That’s it. Other senses, such as smell and taste and feel, do not come into it. Nor do feelings or thoughts. All those things you are utterly dependent upon the actors to convey through tone, facial expressions, and body language. A good actor will bring his or her own sense of the character to the script and express it the way they best understand it.

Taking a script back into a novel is challenging for this very reason. All the things that get left out of a script have to be put back in. The other challenge is POV (point of view). In a script, the POV is always the camera, and you can switch it about from character to character and scene to scene with barely a pivot needed. In fiction, any time you are expressing a thought in a person’s head, or describing what they are seeing, you want to get the scene into their POV. It’s considered poor writing to, for instance, describe each character’s thoughts within the same paragraph or scene, unless you have the “Omniscient” POV, which is a little cumbersome to maintain. It feels more “distant,” from the characters, and therefore less genuine. I tend to avoid it for this reason.

Bear in mind, I had eight of these stories to develop. Well, eight and a half, really. And I also have two to three more unwritten ideas still wandering around the back of my mind.

I decided this morning that I could release six of these as a “season” on Kindle and other ebook platforms and then after the “season,” compile them into a printed novel. This also gives me the flexibility to continue developing the second “season,” which is still being created, but which (doing it this way) is already about half done.

All that is to say you can expect a new project from me to arrive in the next few weeks to a month. I’m debating on starting the release of these in July, to correspond to the holiday of the same name, but I may choose to go sooner. One of the challenges will be coming up with a good cover design, and though I’m loathe to do it, I may have to farm this out.

And just so I’m clear: it’s not that I stopped writing novels completely. I still have made progress on other stories I’ve hinted at. For instance, my faerie novel “A Midsummer Night’s Fear” is very close to being done. I’ve even worked at a new Janelle Becker book as well as toyed around with the second book of the Dragon’s Eye Cycle, though I fear that project may need to be abandoned completely. The other story I started working on, and I actually put a lot of time into this one, was a series called, “The Breaking of the World,” which was all about the story of the American Independence. I wanted to tell the full story in novel form, and I had to go all the way back to 1763 to start with Pontiac’s rebellion in the Detroit area, because that led to the Proclamation of 1763 by King George, which eventually led to the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, and so on and so forth ’til we wound up in armed conflict with Great Britain. The problem here was not having too little to work with, but frankly, too much. And the American Revolution is sacred history. I don’t want to make something up and get it wrong if I can actually find out what happened and get it right. I haven’t given up on the idea completely, but it is a massive undertaking.

So. I’m back. I’m writing again. And more material will be out soon.

Hey there, I just wanted to bring you up to speed. I’m making a few tweaks to the website and to the free book offer, which means updating all eighteen KDP books (I’ll get to the books on other sites later) as well as my email server (Mailchimp).

In short, I’m taking down the offers of The Coppersmith and Topheth, and replacing them with The Lost Scrolls largely because a) I think the new offer is better, and b) because I think it’s a better fit for those who read Nicholas, which is currently my best seller.

At any rate, while this is happening, it’s possible you’ve signed up through one of the books expecting to receive The Lost Scrolls and you might receive The Coppersmith by mistake. If that occurs, I do apologize. There should only be a short window where this might occur before I can get all the ducks lined up. But should it happen, please drop me a line and I’ll send you the correct .mobi file for your kindle post-haste. I hope to have all this wrapped up before the week is out. After that, my stay-cation is over and I have to go back to work, meaning my opportunity to get more of this done will be limited once more.

Also, if you ever signed up to like the facebook page, I’ve changed the name of it to better reflect all the books I have, rather than just the one series. I’m hoping to spend a little more time using it as well, though I’m still learning this part of the indie-writer business.

And yes, I’m still writing. I hope to have something new to offer soon. Cheers!

Greetings! I’ve managed to begin writing again, along with some self-discipline to organize my day (in short, I’ve been running pretty much every day – getting in a mile and a half in about twenty minutes. Yes, I know I’m slow. Old man, here!). It took me a bit to figure out what I wanted to work on, but I’ve decided to work on A Midsummer Night’s Fear – my story about evil faeries breaking out and attacking a town. I freely admit to being inspired by Raymond Feist’s novel Faerie Tale, which I’ve ready maybe three times. There’s a little bit of The Spiderwick Chronicles vibe to it, also. But I’m enjoying myself, nonetheless. I hope to have it done in six to eight weeks.

I’m gonna get back to work now. I have to kill someone off with a water kelpie.

Well, for those who don’t know, we bought a house last month, and have just finished moving in. It’s been a major disruption, and not one that was entirely planned. It began with me casually mentioning to my wife in March that, after paying for the two cars and my daughter’s upcoming wedding (May), that I would like to start saving for a house. My lovely wife, wanting to submit everything to God, asked Him for a sign–completely forgetting that our wonderful Lord has a sense of humor. The next day we got a call from our landlady of ten years, informing us that, because she was selling her own home, she wanted to move into ours in June when our lease was up, so could we kindly vacate the property by then?

After the initial panic subsided a bit, we started looking. By May we finally found a place (there’s very little real estate inventory in the Rochester metro), put in a bid, and had it accepted. We closed at the end of the month, and have spent this past week both moving in and prepping the old home. We’d been there ten years and have a lot of memories–really appreciated the home with which we were blessed.

So now, here I sit in my new living room. I no longer have a den to write in, though the house we purchased is about twenty square feet bigger. There is a lovely fireplace in the family room I hope to enjoy come winter, but it’s a little hot outside to do so now.

It’s gonna take a little time to figure this out, but I have several projects at various stages, and some new ideas I’d like to try. I’m hoping I can get back to writing soon.

I am pleased to announce that Jefferson’s Road: We The People is now complete! Yesterday, at about 5:00 PM EST, I passed the finish line, saved the file, and closed the chapter on a nearly ten year endeavor for me. The series is finished, and I expect to be launching it soon. I’ll make the book available for pre-order from Amazon in a few days (have to design a cover first), and I hope to have it out and available to all shortly thereafter.

Naturally, I’d love to have your feedback, so if you’d like an Advance Reader Copy, please drop me a line and let me know. I hope to get those out to everyone by the end of the week.

It’s a little bittersweet having it completed, but I feel genuinely relieved that it’s done. I hope you find the conclusion epic and satisfying. Right now, it’s time to celebrate.

Thank you to everyone who’s walked these miles with me over the last several years. I couldn’t have done it without your support, encouragement, and frequent nagging.

So The Music of the Spheres is done, and I’ve been working steadily on We The People for about a week now. I’ve added almost 9k words in the last seven days, and will probably push past 10K with today’s writing, getting me a lot closer to the halfway mark. I’m on track to have We The People wrapped up by the end of February, if not sooner.

After that, I expect I’ll be completing The Blood Eater Coven in March, which has languished now for far too long, followed by Wizard Sky Pirates! in April and then Anarchy in May.

The summer will look a little different, as my pace will necessarily slow down due to the fact that the remaining batch of unfinished manuscripts have a lot less done on them. A Mid-Summer Night’s Fear, Puzzle, and Rock of Ages may require a month and a half to two month’s each, which will nearly close out the year. If not, I should be able to reconstruct Episode 2 of Elementals, and possibly get Episode 3 done as well (these were the stories I completely lost when my flash drive disappeared last March).

Well, that’s the plan, anyway. Still, 2018 is looking to be a very productive year for me. The last time I had a year this productive was 2013, when I released four titles. I’m confident this year will put everything else I’ve done beforehand to shame.

Today and tomorrow I’m enjoying a few days off from work, so it’s been nice to catch up and get some stuff cranked out. I hope also to have the print version of A More Perfect Union ready–just as soon as Createspace approves my cover, actually. So there’s that, too.

I’ve updated the word counts on the sidebar. Talk to you again soon.

UPDATE: Yup, wrote 1306 words today and cracked 10k words since the fifteenth. Feels great to be on target.

I’m continuing to make progress – though I confess I’ve spent the last two writing sessions working on The Music of the Spheres, the next Jonathan Munro Adventure. I’m listing its expected word count at 86k, but I wonder if it might reach 90k by the time I’m done. Can’t really say why I’m doing this one instead of the last Jefferson’s Road novel, except that it seems right for some reason.

I think part of it has to do with how well Nicholas has been doing. I’ve been using the Amazon Marketing System to advertise the book, and Nicholas has been doing really well in the lead up until Christmas. I’m on track to earn almost doubled what I did in November, which is promising.

Then again, Nicholas is a distinctly Christian and Christmas book. So will the revenue dry up after the Christmas season? I hope it doesn’t.

But if it does, what else can I do to reach out into the Christian market? This is probably what’s been driving me toward completing TMotS. It’ll give me something I can put out there for fans of the Adventures who might be looking for something a little less… gritty? Maybe just something that’s easier to read.

On the other hand, I’m keenly aware that I have a responsibility to everyone who’s been enjoying Jefferson’s Road and eagerly awaiting the final installment. Don’t worry. I’m still working on it.

Most importantly, I’m doing whatever I can to be sure I work hard at actually writing during my designated time. The more I do this, the more I’ll be able to produce and get something done. Tonight I wrote almost 1.2K words. I probably could have gone further, but it seemed like the right place to quit.

At any rate, I’ve added the potential book cover to the books page if you want to check it out. I might need to add a little more to it. I’m not sure I’ve really captured what the story is about just yet. It feels like there’s something missing in the image. Would welcome any feedback you have on it. You can compare it to the other two covers for the Adventures that are there. I do anticipate at least two more Adventures for Jon, so we’ll see how things go. I gotta be at work early tomorrow, however, so I’m gonna sign off for now.

I’m not exactly sure why or what it might mean. At the moment, it could just be an odd spike. But it’s startling to say the least. So far, I’ve given away almost 100 books today alone. That’s about five times what I’ve been giving away in a month!

The only thing I can think of that might’ve made a difference is the Amazon Marketing Ads I’ve been running. Perhaps the algorithms have kicked in? I don’t know. What I do know is that currently, The Spirit of Resistance is at #983 of all FREE books on Amazon. This is the highest rank the book has attained in over two years. I’m hopeful this means the book will continue to do well and will draw readers into the rest of the series.

In the meantime, just know that I’ve outlined the last book, and I hope to finish it during NaNoWriMo next month.

So it’s not only been awhile since I posted anything, I must also confess it’s been awhile since I’ve really written anything.

Okay, so that’s not exactly true. I have made some progress on book six of Jefferson’s Road, but not like I wanted to. The loss of the flash drive in March put me back on my heels, and it took a bit to recover my mojo.

Along with that, I experienced some major life changes – though the good kind this time. One, my two youngest children graduated high school, so my wife and I are on the cusp of the “empty nest” (although two of them haven’t quite left yet.). On top of that, my youngest child went on the mission field in Guatemala with Potter’s Field Ministries. I’m so proud of her.

Then in June, I was promoted at work with a whole host of new responsibilities. This has taken some getting used to. But the best part is that just a week ago, I was able to go to Guatemala for a week and a half long mission’s trip (and see my daughter near the end. Way cool).

While I was there, I determined that I would get to work on The Music of the Spheres, because it’s been lingering for awhile on my to do list, and I really want to get it done. Knowing I was stuck, I decided to download the book onto my kindle so I could re-read it and see where I left off, and then spend some time outlining where the book needed to go. I was able to knock out the outline in a single night, and the next few nights (with nothing else to do after a hard day’s work building houses or distributing clothes), I wrote (in long hand) two and a half chapters! I’m so happy to be writing again. I spent the last few days since returning transcribing the text into my file, and now I’m ready to crank out the rest so the novel is finished. I’m pretty confident it’ll be done in a few weeks at the most.

This Jon Munro Adventure will be a bit longer than the previous two, but I think you’ll like it. At least one beloved character from the first book is back — though I’ll keep it a secret who.

At any rate, I just wanted to let you know the good news. I’m hoping to get a couple of these books done before the end of the year. Ta for now!

Yes, it’s been awhile since I published anything on this site (or on Amazon, actually), so I thought I’d bring you up to speed on what I’ve been up to these past few months.

Firstly, there was the holiday season, including NaNoWriMo, which I participated in again this year (and won! Yay!), and then Christmas of course. Always keeps me on my toes.

Got a new computer. Still learning how to make it work well for writing. It didn’t come with Microsoft Office, and since Microsoft is being stoopid and not letting people buy a package including only the programs they want instead of stuff they don’t while charging an arm and a leg for the privilege of using a software product they don’t actually get to own–or better yet, requiring a monthly subscription (buwahahahaha!)!–I decided to ditch Microsoft and go with a freebie company. Why pay for the cow, right?

Still, it’s a new software package and it’ll take some getting used to.

Nevertheless, I am writing. I’ve produced over 80K words since October. And yes, once more, I have wa-ay too many irons in the fire. It involves the creation of two entirely new series.

But wait! Before you scream AAUUGGHH! at me, lemme ‘splain: For about a year now, I’ve been toying with a new approach to story telling. Rather than writing a full length novel (and of course I’m still doing those!), I want to try writing a set of smaller stories in serial format. I began with a rather dark retelling of Gilligan’s Island (it involves each of the castaways as representative of one of the seven deadly sins with Gilligan as the devil–oh never mind!), and then got inspired by Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle and came up with a Christian adventure story set in the Republic of the Pacific States (which I imagined long before they started threatening to break away from the U.S. due to the Trump victory, I promise!), where Christianity is illegal and the government is run according to the rules of political correctness. As I got into the story, however, I quickly realized that I didn’t know how to write a story in serial format. It kept coming out as a rather long-winded novel. Not what I was after.

I shelved it, and for NaNoWriMo this year, began work on a different story called Elementals, dealing with four characters who each possess some ability to control an element or have some kind of superpower (think Heroes or The Flash, but a little less outlandish), and who come together to try to make life work. At any rate, the important thing is that I’m figuring out how to write in serial form, where each episode is self-contained, and yet also advances a major story arc. I plan to take this approach and reapply it to the Christian story, because I think that concept is a little bit better and more in line with my kind of fiction. I’ll still finish Elementals and put it out there, but it’s just written for fun and on my end, to learn. I’ve planned on at least six episodes for this one. The Christian story is far more involved, with at least three seasons of seven episodes each in consideration. I don’t know yet how well I’ll be able to get it done, but I aim to try.

In the meantime, I still have to finish up Jefferson’s Road along with many of my other projects. But I’m writing much more rapidly now than before, and I can often crank out 2K words in about an hour and a half. I hope to keep writing at least this much every day. True, I haven’t exactly done it every day yet this month (wow! Is it really the 9th already?), but its better to set a high goal and miss it than to set a low goal and miss that one too.