Writing/Editing Update: January Edition

Steampunk Novel. No typing on this while I was buried under deadlines, but it's been kept on a nice simmer on a back burner. Thinking so much about character arcs and how as I started the manuscript the lead characters were a bit too nice; they need some rough edges that will get polished by …

Writing/Editing Update: December Edition

Happy New Year and all that. Steampunk Novel. I did a little typing on this while staying at my mom's house, just a few hundred words or so, but it felt good to spend even a little time on it. I plan on digging back in this year to finally complete a draft.  Shared-World Novella and The Satellite Dish. …

Writing/Editing Update: November Edition

Steampunk Novel. This was supposed to be the year I finished the first draft of my long-suffering novel. After a slow period in late fall, I was starting to worry about making that self-imposed deadline. But with the various obligations thrust upon us after my stepfather's passing, I decided I had to give myself a …

Writing/Editing Update: October Edition

Late in October, around the time I would normally be putting this belated post together, my stepfather passed away suddenly after a fall. I don't post a lot of such personal stuff, but this sad turn of events had a large impact on my professional life as well. There would be no way to write …

Writing/Editing Update: September Edition

Steampunk Novel. Yikes. After blasting back into the novel throughout August after the nothing burger of July, September turned out to be another dead-end month as I scrabbled to meet freelance deadlines. More on that below. Shared-World Novella. Nothing new to report. The Satellite Dish. Nothing new to report. Ko-Fi. A quick review of the 2014 legal …

Writing/Editing Update: August Edition

Steampunk Novel. As previously posted, July was basically a bust on this as I labored mightily on four freelance gigs. Determined to turn things around, I instituted a modest 500 words per day minimum beginning August 1. This has turned out to be a great approach for me, and as of today I have added 13,385 …

From the Vault: My Matt Jefferies Story

For any non–Star Trek people reading this, the late Matt Jefferies designed the original Starship Enterprise, its bridge, sickbay, and shuttlecraft interior, the Klingon cruiser, and numerous other sets and props including the phasers. During the shooting of Star Trek: The Original Series, the access tubes Scotty often had to crawl into to save the ship …