Guardians, Vampires and Flicks

Where the hell does the time go?? I mean seriously! I know I’m not a spring chicken, but I’m not so old that I can use that as an excuse for spacing off months at a time. Come to think of it, most older folks I know keep up with things better than I do. Oh well. In the words of the immortal sailor: I yam what I yam.

So what’s been up with me? Let’s see…I finally made it through all the summer popcorn movies I wanted to see. Best of the bunch had to be Guardians of the Galaxy. I was familiar with the comics to a certain extent, but enough to be fairly confident it was gonna kick ass as soon as I saw the first preview. Good to know I was right. I also recently Netflixed (yeah it’s a verb now) the new remake of Robocop. This was one that I thought should be pretty good even if it wasn’t great. Turns out, the makers of that film actually found a way to make Robocop BORING! What the…huh??? ED209s were there, robot cops were there, even Gary Oldman and Jackie Earle Haley were there! Oh well. There’s always the Dark Knight trilogy and Human Target to see those last two guys shine!

On the work front, things have been amping up nicely. Most recently I’ve been putting together a short story for the third anthology in Jonathan Maberry’s V-Wars series. Very cool stuff. Here’s a link!  I’ve also got another pretty big project happening. It’s not a huge secret or anything (not Skinners related) but I’d rather make a big announcement a little later. I just don’t want to jinx anything, you know? It’ll be cool. Trust me.

Guess that’s it for now. 

UPDATE - That cool thing I mentioned at the end fell through. Them's the breaks.

Love you, Ma

It’s been a rough couple of months. On a personal note, I recently lost my grandma Sophie who was one of the sweetest, most charming and loving people I’ve ever known. She was one of the foundations for who I am and everything I’ve done. I’ll never stop missing her. My world will be a little dimmer now that she’s no longer in it. Of course she’s with me in spirit and she made a point to tell me she’d watch over me, but it’s still tough.

On a professional note, the publishing industry continues to be an unconscionable ball-breaker. Series are getting axed left and right, which is a good and bad thing for us writers. Obviously, having fewer series to write hits us in the wallet. However, it frees us up to pursue our own passions and get our projects out there in ebook format. To that end, I’ve been hard at work on several different fronts. Book two of The Gillis Ledgers is coming along nicely and should be released in a month or two. After that, I’ll be hard at work on Book 8 of Skinners. Around the same time as the new Gillis comes out, I’ll be releasing the first book in a brand new steampunk series. More on that later, but I’m very excited about it!

Hope you all are doing well and don’t worry, I’ll have more for you guys to read real soon! 

Hello from the COOOOLD

Hey! The holidays are over. Whew. Is it just me or is every holiday a prolonged, agonizing trial anymore? I love Halloween, but now it starts in Sept and goes all the way through Oct with a non-stop shit storm of cutesy costumes, candy commercials and “spooky” put in front of everything on menus and billboards. And Christmas? I think it’s still going, right? Sigh. Anyway, I laid low for a spell and now I’m back.

I’ve been working on a few projects. I’ll have some new Ralph Compton westerns coming out under the Marcus Galloway pseudonym. Also my Doc Holliday series, The Accomplice, is being re-released in e-book format. On the horizon, I’m about to start in on the next Gillis Ledger book as well as another Skinners project. Of course I’ll be doing Book 8, but what would you guys feel about some stand-alone prequels? Maybe stories from Paige’s early career? That could be cool. I’m also circulating some steampunk and crime novels to various publishers and if they don’t get snatched up, I’ll be releasing them my own damn self!

In other news, my Dad called me today for tech support on his Kindle Fire. Why does this warrant a mention? About a year and a half ago, I took some work answering the phones at Amazon for Kindle support. I did fairly well in the knowledge and fixing stuff departments, but my customer service / warm fuzziness was lacking. Can you believe that? Fuck them, right? Heh. So when my Dad calls for help with a WiFi connection problem, I had all kinds of advice and steps for him to take. A real chance to impress the guy. Did I fix his Kindle? Of course I didn’t. Maybe someday I’ll find something I’m good at. Until then, take care!