And Here's To You: Almost 3 years later

This Halloween will mark the 3rd anniversary of the release of my first completed novel, And Here's To You (which just recently became available at the iTunes Book store, hence it being on the mind. http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9781257516582).

Since then, I have finished two more fiction projects the same way I finished AHTY; National novel Writing Month, a.k.a. NaNoWriMo. If you don't know what NaNoWriMo is, to quote Nash, "What in the whole of fuck is wrong with you?" ;-) Seriously though, http://nanowrimo.org It's fun.

Anyway, one of those, KPKY is languishing in editing hell right now, while the other, Night of the Living Impaired sadly had to be trunked due to, well, the fact that "formaldehyde doesn't work that way," which was something of a storybreaker. Me losing all but 3 chapters due to a simultaneous loss of a thumb drive and my best friend's copy being corrupted and unreadable/uneditable certainly didn't help. While KPKY still has hope, NOTLI is dead (no pun intended), but regardless that means that even if I go the POD route again, it could be as much as a year before anyone sees a new completed project from me; a whole Presidential term.

This is not to say I've given up pursuing writing; I am full of ideas, and I am looking forward to this year's NaNo, as well as a little vanity project I'm starting prepping for; a little something that really only fans of my fiction and my podcasts would enjoy. The literary equivalent to Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back if you will. ;-) It's a non-fiction/comedy book I currently have titled "No Meat, No God, No Ke$ha" though that is subject to change.

But it is sad to think of how little of it I've actually gotten done in the past 3 years. There was this Star Trek fanfic project I was doing, mainly so as to get a failed RPG campaign out of my head because it was taking up space, but a combination of computer failure and personal failure (relating to college) killed that one in the crib. Most of it is my fault; for starters I let ONE reader of AHTY get to me, which nearly drove me to do the whole thing over again just because she and only she wanted it to be much longer, with more sex scenes. Agreeing to that was not just a mistake because she was the only one asking for it, but it was a mistake because it made me break one of the cardinal rules of writing; one that George Lucas needs to be reminded of. At a certain point, you have to let your project go. The baby bird you got carpal tunnel syndrome from working on can't stay in the nest forever. I spent months planning the revised, new and improved, 2.0 version of And Here's To You before writer Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace helpfully pimp-slapped that notion out of my head on the Good Cop, Bad Cop segment of Mur's I Should Be Writing podcast (in this episode to be specific; http://isbw.murlafferty.com/2010/10/isbw-160-feedback/).

There is one thing I'd like to do over for AHTY, and this place is as good as any to bring it up since it is the anniversary (next month) and all. In one chapter (shame I don't have a copy on me where I can just look this up, confound it all) I put in a scene mocking the Hollywood romantic story cliche of the misunderstanding that leads to an unjustified charge on infidelity. The punchline of the sequence is Richard, the main male protagonist, having a *facepalm* moment before the bad stuff can happen and he basically chides himself for thinking it and he wonders where the thought even came from. And it never comes up again, and Richard continues on being his rational logical self.

Say it with me folks...

Not only that, but in retrospect (and a teensy portion of the blame lies with my editor for not asking more questions about this scene, whilst the flashback in the "November" chapter went through more re-writes than the NBC Wonder Woman pilot, and I'm still not 100% thrilled with it as flashbacks seems to be my Achilles' heel as a writer), it makes Richard look like a possessive jealous asshole.

Um, all that said, please go buy it. :-D It's a good read, that one-page long (possibly even shorter IIRC) scene aside. The PDF version is only $1.99.

So yeah, AHTY, 3 years later. Still mostly proud of it, and the recent addition of it to the iStore opens up a potential new audience to the book, which I don't think will be too dated (though it can probably be easily pegged as taking place in the early 2000s) for any of you fine folks.

And here's to more writing I can be proud of in the future. Good night, and good luck.