Back in the saddle again!

After a few weeks of hiding behind various excuses (some legitimate!), I am back to writing fiction.  Nothing majorly astounding.  Just working on some WIPs.

Last night and this morning were all about me getting myself caught up on school work.  I was a week behind on my online postings, and I managed to make that up in one class.  The other class, I couldn't do it, so I get a Zero for last week's assignment (the Prof closes the discussion board at the end of each week).  But, I managed to do this week's post for that class, so I'm not behind anymore.  This morning I got about 800 words done on my Academic Book Review.  Did I mention that the original draft, which was about 1100+ words already, got corrupted?  Same way as my Orc story a couple of months ago.  I think it had something to do with my flash drive.  When I plugged it in at home, Windows Vista detected problems and fixed them for me.  But, too little too late.  Now I have to start over, and it's due on Sunday.  No problem.

This afternoon I decided to do some fiction writing in between work-related tasks.  So, after some snooping amongst all of my various projects, I decided to work on the new Orc story for Scott Oden's anthology.  What ensued was almost 700 words of mostly dialogue.  The story progressed, and the chase is on.  The rest of it is going to be pretty action-oriented, with a cool ending (well, I think it's cool, anyways).

I'm also thinking about a few other works.  I wrote an orc story based loosely on the universe of Disney's Treasure Planet a while back.  Today I started thinking about the sequel.  I think I may go back and expand the first story some, and flesh it out.  Then write two more stories about the character as sequels.  Then self-publish (or maybe send off to a few publishing houses first) the whole collection as a novel.  I kind of like that idea.

And lastly, I am going to try to finish up the Thomas Magni story, and submit it for publication.  Already have a couple of markets scoped out for that one.  I just need to write the last third, which is already done in my head, and I just need to get it on paper, so to speak.

In non-writing news, I got a new car.  A 2008 Chevy Impala.  It's a red sedan, and is a very nice drive.  The gas mileage is a smidge better than the XTerra was, but the payments are much lower, and insurance should be as well.

But, the biggest news of all is that my wife quit her job on Saturday!  She is a hair-stylist, and has been working at the same salon for about fifteen years.  She'd finally had enough of various problems, so she is going out on her own.  She is renting a suite, and expects to be opening her doors to clients on December 8th.  She is now self-employed, and it is very exciting.  So, if you're in the Madison area, and you are looking for a new stylist (men, women, children) look her up at Lily's Head Space.