Phew! It's been awhile. Between trying to handle a backyard that wants nothing more than to try and go for a swim and take my basement along with it (something that still isn't fixed, mind you), managing all that stuff that I got in order to "pimp out" my basement because I thought it had been fixed alright, removing shorted light switches, writing and edit short stories to meet deadlines, and trying to organize and secure my Pokemon card collection to keep it accessible but out of harm from the water. I've not had a lot of time. Oh, and I got sick...during a pandemic. Not Covid thankfully, but the scare was there. So I think I counted three more gray hairs in my beard yesterday but I'll have to confirm it wasn't just a trick of the light. And it's almost Christmas! Luckily I have almost all of my shopping done. Just two more people to buy for. Which I should probably do today...

But, moving on! I do have some good news to through on the pile! I announced it on Twitter and Facebook, but didn't make it here, so I will now...not only do I have a book (Touched by Shadows) coming out on September 24, 2021 through JournalStone Publishing, but also, my short adventure horror story, "The Thing at the Top of the Mountain" is going to be included in Off Limits Press' FAR FROM HOME anthology! I am beyond excited to share a space with so many other high quality authors. No release date for that quite yet, but I'll be sure to point it out when we know it. I also may have some other news coming up soon, so there may be an off-schedule blog post in the near future, so keep an eye out for that! Speaking of schedules...once a week was a lofty goal, and it was fun, but life, uh, finds a way...to make that difficult. So, going forward, and barring any important news I need to freak out over, the new schedule for the blog will be every other week...bi-weekly...twice a month. However you want to phrase it. It will give me more time to prep quality posts for you all to enjoy and also hopefully make maintaining the blog a bit less stressful in conjunction with all of the life happening around me. Thank you in advance for understanding!

Since this is mostly an update post, I'll give you guys a bit of a peek into where I am in regards to writing projects. Most of the ones I've been laboring over are done. As you know, Touched by Shadows is out next year, "The Thing at the Top of the Mountain" will be in an anthology next year, I have another short horror story writing specifically for a submission next year (I know, look at me, not procrastinating), and of course the other potential news I mentioned is well...a potential. Those were my big 2020 projects. So what's next for Vaughn?

Well...
1) I started working on a Hard Science Fiction novel, tentatively called Spire. It's been fun doing all of the research and stuff to solidify the science in my fiction, but oh god it's a lot, and so progress is pretty slow on that front. Still I would like to have a draft of it done by the end of next year.

2) I have several ideas (and a few words) for a potential sequel to Touched by Shadows, with more of an occult mystery feel to it. That's all I really want to say on that because spoilers.

3) I want to write a Sword & Sorcery fantasy novel. I love epic fantasy, sprawling over several books, but sometimes I just want a nice, self contained adventure. Maybe some swashbuckling. And more fun. Grimdark fantasy (which I do love a bit of from time to time) has become more popular as of late, but I'd really just like to write a fun fantasy novel. I don't have too much in the way of ideas on this front at the moment, but it's on my list of things to get to.

4) Short stories. There used to be a point where I swore up and down I couldn't write short stories to save my life. I submitted three short stories this year, two rejections and and an acceptance. I recently submitted an edited version of one of the rejections to a different publisher, so it's up in the air. But I'll probably write some more in between working on the above novels and hopefully get some more submissions out there. I may also dive into some of my older ones as well and see if I can give them a new, better life. Who knows.

These are all pretty vague because they're all super early on in their life cycles, and destined to change, fall through, die, reincarnate and so on, as projects often do. They're more here to highlight that "yes, I'm still working on things, I've just exhausted this years allotted word fund and will likely be working well into next year before I have anymore big updates.

Any thanks for following along with me, and I hope you'll continue to support my writing and read my random thoughts. An early happy holidays to all of you!