Hello once again, everybody!

Having just embarked on a (semi-working) vacation, now seemed a good time for an update on where things stand with this year’s NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and other writing news in general.

At this point, my NNWM word count stands at just above 32K, and will hopefully reach 34K by tonight. If events the next two weeks permit, I should hit the 50K winner mark by the 29th–one day ahead of the official Nano finish! Work on this project (Lux Ascending, the third in a fantasy trilogy…and the fifth in what may turn out to be an EIGHT-book overarching series, in the end :O) will probably go on for a week or two into December, after which it’ll be time for a wind-down and planning for next year’s drafts, with some add. work on my Alternate History short story “Ballots and Barricades” thrown in. To call the past several weeks “draining” doesn’t come within light-years of putting it mildly, as usual, esp. given the genre choice, which, I freely admit, I still have only the barest grasp of how to write within. Nonetheless, the thrill from having a line of dialogue, a paragraph, a scene, a section or a chapter set down on the screen, rather than richocheting pointlessly in the mind, hasn’t gone away in the slightest, and doesn’t look likely to even after more than 10 years of chasing the 50K each November.

Nor is this thrill the only one of late: After much waiting, I’m pleased to report that the Sea Lion Press AH anthology “‘If We’d Just Got That Penalty’. A Collection of Alternate History Sporting Stories”, which includes my short story “Toe-to-Toe”, will be released next month! Cover art and link are still pending, but the lineup/table of contents is set, and all drafts in; estimated date is shortly before Xmas. Up to this work, and the other I wrote for the SLP “Apocalypse How?”, I haven’t written much in the short story format; every AH and other idea that’s come to mind has seemed at least novella length, so I’ve found myself sticking to that or novels since almost the beginning, with anything shorter confined to thematic anthologies, as with my “In Other Words” collection and the stories I’ve been grouping together for a similar effort set in the world of my AH “Divided Worlds” novella. Given the fun I’ve found myself having with short works, however, this may well change in the coming year…

Speaking of “Divided Worlds”, that story is once again on sale on Kindle, along with another novella “Obsidian & Steel”! The former has recently been updated, including with a cool new AH 1999 world map (below) designed by Robert Altbauer (www.fantasy-map.net); grab a copy of either at the links here if in need of a short fiction fix, or just a last-minute Thanksgiving gift.

That’s everything for this month; catch you all on the other side of the NNWM tunnel!