Ahhh, the spam has started to arrive! I was wondering how long that was going to take, and I am rather surprised it has taken this long. Honestly, spammers–find something better to do with your existence.

Yesterday’s net work resulted in the finishing up of my Victorian photograph-inspired short-short, “Better Deader”. It has since been posted to my Patreon page (www.patreon.com/hehutsell), which you are welcome and encouraged to go and sign up to support! I have about 3 or 4 more photographs to write about, and then sadly, I will have to come up with something else. Though, I’m hoping that by still putting out one piece per month, I have 3 to 4 months to save up a few dollars and go and collect more images. This little exercise was going to be part of my rewards for the Kickstarter I haven’t yet launched (supporters who pledged a certain dollar amount would be able to send me a photo of their choice–within reason!–and I would write a short-short for them, based on whatever they provided). I will still include that, once I am able to get to that campaign. Right now, the hold up is in that I don’t feel I can devote enough time to The Case Files series to crank out books as fast as I think the campaign would insinuate or demand. The campaign would be to help cover the cost of the cover art, which is the hardest part to come up with monies for, and has the shortest time in which to do it. Should things turn around for me in a positive manner, financially speaking, I may end up paying one artist at a time, as to buy myself more room to get the books written. I do want to get back into them, but The Open Book jumped to the head of the queue, as it has been waiting much longer to be finished…Sooooon, my good people, soon.

Anyway. The Open Book: yesterday, I got another 4 pages written. Not much at all, in my opinion, but it did mean the finishing of a chapter, and then the joining of two scenes, thereby eliminating a gap. Next up for it is to close another gap and finish another chapter. Then I think I get to move ahead by about 20 pages to the next canyon. (Actually, I think it’s an entire chapter for which I do have some pretty good notes, and maybe a paragraph or two already done.) I look at the book thus far and see that I’m on page 97 out of 172, and think “Oh! I’m so close to being done!” which isn’t even close to true. As I add more pages, that ending number just grows and I push it farther and farther out. Though, this is a good thing and what I want to happen! If I had to guess, I would say this book is about 50 pages away from being done–exciting???? That’s really not bad at all. Maybe not possible to get done between now and July 31st, but I will see what I can do about getting much closer to that.

Today held a nice, simple surprise. Someone on Facebook was asking around for whom people recommended as a Writer Guest of Honor for a con next year. Someone mentioned me as the best writer he knows… It’s really amazing to get to read something like that about myself. As I commented in that thread–It’s rare to get feedback, let alone Good feedback!! I really wouldn’t mind if people would reach out to me more after reading my work and say something about it. I’m not sure what holds people back from doing that. I have told a few of my favorite writers/artists that I love their work–it’s really not difficult, and I’m far from intimidating. Well, I think I’m pretty approachable. It’s not like I’m going to start a screaming match over an Amazon book review….

Class, everyone. You’ve got to have class. Tact doesn’t hurt either.

Well, this was a very long day for me, so I’m off to either scribble on paper, or pick up a book for a few paragraphs, before going off to see what dreams may come…