Can you believe it's 2020?

I certainly can't! I never pictured us experiencing this date on this side of the system, but here we are.

I wanted to update you all on how things have been going lately, since I know it's been a bit quiet over the last few months since the release of STAND. As has become my custom, I've taken a little breather after the completion of the last novel to recoup. In addition, life has been a bit of whirlwind since August (when the book was released), with conventions and other events keeping me busy.

In the midst of all this, I was working on the audiobook for FLEE, which I completed and released as promised for free on YouTube. I later went back and re-recorded many of the older chapters and planned to put everything up on Audible so that the audiobook version could be purchased alongside the Kindle and paperback versions on Amazon, but this turned into a bigger headache than I imagined.

The software I used to record and edit has not worked well with Audible's audio proofing process, with numerous issues and errors keeping me from publishing every time I try to submit the files. In addition, Amazon's customer support has been less than ideal, with many of my inquiries going unanswered and customer reps changing constantly, requiring me to re-explain the issues in detail. All of this, you can imagine, has slowed down the process and frankly killed a lot of my motivation to pursue this particular project. I'm not giving up just yet, but I've turned my attention to other things for the time being.

Going forward with the books, I've had about five different projects on the back burner for the last year or so. On occasion I'll go back over these ideas and write a bit here and there, perhaps fleshing out a scene or two or trying to piece together a rough synopsis to give me a launching point. These books span quite a range of genres, from a historical fiction set in 15th century England centered around a small ragtag team of Bible smugglers to a sci-fi interplanetary-colonization series set several millennia into the New World. All fun ideas, yes, but so far nothing has really jumped out at me.

That is, until I sat down about a month ago and started work on a brand new project, something completely unrelated to the ideas I'd had stewing in the back of my mind for so long. This story is much more grounded in our present reality, and is, in fact, a sequel. And just so I don't encourage any false hopes out there, I'll go ahead and tell you that it's the second part to Will Larson's story from The Bloom of Youth.

When we left Will in the last story, we'd seen him grown partway to manhood. He'd learned, through a tumultuous adolescent year, to make the truth his own and take a stand for what he believed in. At the time, I was happy leaving the story at that, until I started thinking more about my own adolescence and all the other things I learned and experienced during those difficult years.

Since I'm only a fraction of the way into writing the first draft, I don't have a title or a cover to share here just yet, I just wanted to let you all know what's in store. Hope you're all having a lovely (and not too cold) January 1st.

Still can't believe we're in 2020!