Well, finishing the Hopeless Harry series continues to be delayed, and it’s mostly my own fault. Okay, entirely my fault, but I still prefer abandoning dignity over copping inadequacy, and I really want to just accuse Mark Zuckerberg. Why? Because, let’s face it, he’s an easy target, he has it coming, and finally, why the heck not?

So, here’s basically what happened. I wrote about 15,000 words and then scrapped most of it because it was too plot-heavy (and with something as cheerfully inane as the Hopeless Harry stories, that actually is a problem). There was too much prose devoted to describing things, shuffling characters from point A to B, and just being not very interesting. Other than keeping the introductory passages, I pretty much started back at the beginning.

Then I wrote about 16,000 words and realized that the story made almost no sense, the new characters and locations were so poorly developed that they were practically random entities, and there was no sense of actual progression. It was just a long string of one-liners, gags, and non-sequiturs. I might as well have been writing some aimless horn-of-plenty filled with word vomit (the Tristram Shandy of whacked-out sci-fi comedy). I thought it was funny enough overall, but only because I could make sense of it; I doubt that anyone else would be able to do so without struggling, and they’d (wisely) bail early.

Back to square one again. And then I got there. I passed 20,000 words, reviewed it multiple times, and was mostly satisfied with the narrative/silliness ratio. Good on me! Unfortunately, I was beyond 20,000 words (the previous longest Harry entry was just shy of 21,000), and I still had quite a ways to go. Meaning that I am now at a crossroads: split the last story into two stories and make the entire saga a hexalogy instead of a pentalogy*, or I start trimming scenes/jokes to squish it all in and avoid making the final chapter an overlong slog. Decisions, decisions…

Taking a brief breather while reflecting on this choice, I went ahead and did something I’d been meaning to do for a while now: redesign some book covers. I’m tackling the Blood-Dimmed Tide series first, so I cranked out a few mockups, picked the one I liked best, and got to work. Below is what I currently have for the first book, Alive, Aware and Dangerous (it may still be tweaked, but I expect it’ll at least look pretty close to this in the final version):

You can compare the new one with the original look on the Amazon page.

As with the original design, each cover will be a different color–blue, red, black–representing the colors of the New Confederacy of the Innocents’ flag. They’ll also each feature the same sort of stylized character depiction–Eve for part 1, Eve and Darian for part 2, Eve vs. Alice for part 3. Not sure when these will roll out, but not too long I imagine. Probably shortly after I solve this Harry conundrum.

Well, delays have been a bitch-and-a-half, so no point standing around now, pondering the liar’s paradox and creating weird smells. Back to it!

(And as always, don’t forget to join the mailing list and connect on the ol’ social media platforms; links at the top)

*which is not to denote it’s some kind of pretentious myth cycle…no, no, it’s all still a bunch of nonsense. If you even used the word “myth” around Harry, he’d think you had a lisp and insist that he is, in fact, a man.