After months of uncertainty things have finally settled down and for the first time in 21 years I’m unemployed. The last time I was out of work was 1991 when I left the USMC for civilian life. I worked part-time over the next year with Manpower while living in Mesa, Arizona before accepting a position with a software company in Tucson. That job eventually led to a better position in Austin, Texas in 1996 and a career in technical writing, training, and management.
So, here I am, with time on my hands and lots to do.
The current plan is to use the next few months to finalize An Empire Forgotten, the first book of the Forgotten Empires trilogy, and self-publish it. Most of the work consists of reworking the first 8 chapters to make them more consistent with the rest of the book. Since it was my first attempt at getting the main characters in place it has several plot problems, time sequencing issues, characterization missteps, as well as other writing problems concerning style and tone that smoothed out as I wrote more of the story. Maybe 3-4 months of work to whip it into shape for a final review and edit before release. So lots to do there.
In addition I have several partially completed short stories (Storms, Meeting, and others) that I need to finish and release as well. With over a handful of stories on tap then releasing maybe one a month would expand the number of titles out there so people have a better chance to discover my writing.
Also, in the future you loyal readers can expect to see a few more blog entries as I find myself with more to say and more time to do so. We’ll count this as the first of that new stream of posts.
