Stupefyingly Dense

Contrary to popular opinion (and in spite of what those two nitwits have been saying about me), I haven't really gone away, but more like simply taking an extended vaca from part of my cyberworld existence. Specifically, a brief powder from Facebook.

While Facebook may be a pretty good thing to keep up with friends and family, it can also be a bit of a soul crusher.

Case in point: I have an ungodly amount of writers in my circle of friends as well as amongst the fifteen dozen pages that I have liked, and with the exception of about what I can count on one hand, it seems like almost all of the writers in my newsfeed are type AAA personalities with extreme tunnel vision and density.

Every time I look at my newsfeed, I get seriously disgusted with the type of status updates these people throw out on a regular basis. You know the kind I'm talking about: "Oh, I just cranked out 20K more words on my next book!"; "Oh, I'm inviting you to a cover reveal for next book that's coming out in  three weeks!"; "Oh, I just made Amazon's top 2,000!"; "Oh, can you give me enough likes to hit 2,000!"

It's just so never ending, pounding my eyeballs and brain cells until I'm about ready to punch out my computer screen to make it stop.

I know I shouldn't let it bother me, but the excess verbiage is so relentless that more often than not, it's seriously making me question my chosen path of relaxation.

This past weekend (6/22 & 23), I finally cried uncle. While I didn't do something drastic as deactivating my account, I did the next best thing: I stayed away.

Staying away allowed me to finally get off my sorry ass and do something about my writing, which as luck would have it, is what the 2nd half of this post is all about.

First, a brief update on "Shadow's Vengeance" (aka ASWR).

After doing a little judicious editing as it was suggested by the editor, I resubmitted to another imprint under that publisher's umbrella. Sadly I received a rejection in early June. I have not decided on whether or not to continue with my querying. I am for the moment leaning towards self-publishing. However, I do have the luxury of biding my time with this, which is directly due to the next item on the agenda.

Rewriting my chapbook "Betrayed!"

I am doing a complete hatchet job on this book as I quickly realized that even though my writing was pretty decent in '09, it was not for this particular story.

There are way too many issues with this book for me to list, so I'll simply skip to how I'm rewriting it.

1} Paranormal. I'm currently hip deep and extremely comfortable with this genre, so it's being rewritten much like my other novellas that I have.

2} Sex. Lots of it and better written than what's already there.

3} Verbiage. Because I'm applying what I know now to this story, the page count will grow exponentially. Example: while keeping within the basic outline of the first chapter, it has now ballooned to something more in line with what I have out there now.

This weekend was spent making excellent progress as I cranked out roughly 4,500 words of text. And for those of you who don't think that's a lot, keep in mind I write everything out by hand first before transcribing to the computer. Writing by hand allows me to focus & concentrate on what I want to say better than sitting in front of my computer waiting to be inspired.

I'm hoping to carve out another chunk this coming weekend now that summer is here and the mountain and town is in full bloom and my bicycle is now back in working order, but a recent accident involving the wife has thrown a small wrench into that plan. Nevertheless, we will persevere and hopefully will have something completed by the end of the summer.

And for those of you who know me on Facebook, I'll still check in from time to time, but until I can get my anger under control (writing while angry, you know I haven't done that for a few years) small doses of Facebook is about all I'll be able to do.