Stories of the Week for October 23, 2013

Hey, there. Welcome back to the blog studio. Oh, and watch your step, there are a whole bunch of flaming pumpkins lying around. 

This week has been another busy one, and not always in a good way. I lost a ton of time trying to fix my laptop after it started to have issues (after an issue with windows update, it refused to start any programs, or even open any documents, saying that a single file was missing). The fix turned out to be quite easy, but finding it involved dual-wielding computers, since the current one was practically useless. In the end, I had to use the scannow function, which thankfully was still working, and it scanned through the core components and fixed the one that went wonky.

But before all the computer headaches—where I was scrambling to back up every file I had on my laptop, searching in vain for elusive Windows product keys, and muttering every curse word imaginable—I was still deep in promotion, both for my free ebook, my thriller novel, and an anthology I'll be appearing in soon. I did a Character Interview for the wonderful Laurie at lauriethoughts-reviews.blogspot.com, which was surprisingly fun to do. (The character I chose was Sam from TNTB, who's a female bank robber, and a rather colorful character). The interview should go up sometime in November. I also did an author interview for another site to promote my story in Wrapped in Red, the vampire anthology from Sekhmet Press, which is due to release on October 29, 2013.

And I'm happy to say I did also manage to squeeze in some writing time. The first draft of the spooky Middle Grade novel has been completed. I've also written up a query letter for it, which I really like, so I'm a couple steps closer to being able to submit it. The dreaded synopsis is still lurking ahead, as is another round or three of edits, but I'm really excited about this book. We'll see if the excitement fades as the editing and submission process starts—it usually does—but for now, I have a very good feeling about this one.

(Photo:“Halloween, 2012” by George Alexander, garussell11 on Flickr)