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Well, I’ve been quiet again lately. In January I announced that I would be making some changes to this website and would update the blog when I had those plans made. Planning took longer than I expected. By a lot. Here’s where I stand.

Should I give up on this blog?

I hope you don’t, but it has become an endeavor that I won’t be able to return to with the consistency I had hoped. I have a few other plans to solve that issue, however.

First, I’m starting a newsletter. I know, you’re probably thinking “Wait, your blogging failed so you’re going to start sending writing to people’s inboxes? I don’t think that’s going to work…” The point of transitioning from a blog to a newsletter is that my newsletter will be very informal. Instead of a well-researched article on elements of publishing, fantasy books or shows, or storytelling, each newsletter will be short and will just be a few thoughts on stories I’ve engaged with lately. Sometimes that might be a comment on how frustrated I was with Rings of Power, or how I found the movie Missing surprisingly entertaining despite not really liking the storytelling style. Sometimes it might be a discussion on what I’m thinking about a particular trend in fantasy and then a question on what my readers think. And every now and then, my newsletter will just be me offering something free to those people who choose to subscribe. I’ll release another blog post when newsletter subscriptions are available. Hopefully that will be later this week.

Second, I’m starting a YouTube channel named Hotplots and Synonym Roles: Real-time editing with a real-life editor. This is an effort to combine work and get editing done on my writing projects which need my attention while providing content for my fans. Currently the focus of this channel will be editing my own work, but once I’m a bit more caught up on that, I will be accepting short submissions to edit live for another author, potentially with that author on the video to discuss the edits. More on that plan when it is closer. The YouTube channel currently exists and you can subscribe now if you would like. I expect my first videos to go up mid to late May.

Finally, I will still be releasing longer, more comprehensive updates and/or thoughts on this blog at least twice a year, hopefully 4-6 times a year.

What’s going on with the story collection?

I am still working on developmental edits for Tales of the Laisian Empire, Volume 1. As I said above, I plan to use my new YouTube channel for editing in order to streamline my various goals into one thing. That means that you’ll be able to watch me edit my story collection before purchasing it. If I get enough subscribers, I’ll even transition the edits into livestreams so my followers can comment on the decisions I’m making as I make them. The goal is to use this method to get the necessary edits done in time to release the book this year. Since that particular project is 10-11 stories that are relatively long, I may not release the entire editing series before the book comes out, but I’ll make sure the entire series gets released.

What about new stories?

I understand that a some of you enjoyed my fiction writing on here and I want to try to preserve that. At this point in time, I am too swamped catching up on publishing to get anything new ready for release. As a result, my plan is to do some writing on the second short story collection in downtime between my other projects so long as it doesn’t delay the release of any of the projects my current readers and followers are waiting on. What I would like to do is release them on a serialization platform like Kindle Vella to increase readership and make it easier to engage with me about the writing, but I dislike the inability to make the stories perma-free on those sites. I don’t yet know enough about those options to make a plan for that yet. I may use Wattpad, though I don’t write to that platform’s largest demographic. Regardless of how I release new stories, the edits to turn those initial stories into a collection for release will be live-edited on my YouTube channel. More details later in the year when I have more knowledge of what I can do there.

Another note about Twitter

I received a notification recently that Twitter has adjusted its interface system and WordPress will not be able to cross-post my blogs to Twitter any longer. Be aware if I suddenly vanish from Twitter even further that it’s all Twitter’s fault…or so WordPress would have you believe. They might be right, I don’t know. I wasn’t in the negotiating room.