From The Ashes....

Well, back from vacation. Nice to just get away, sleep late, use the strangely-chlorinated pool and relax. Anyway, while away I checked on the status of the Amazon contest. Margaret's Ark, even with the positive PW review and a glowing one from Amazon's top reviewer, didn't make the cut for the final 100. Ah, well. This was the tape I was sticking my chest out to reach. Thought it would be too narrow a scope for much past that, but I was really hoping for that one last nod or attaboy. Still, I was pleased with how the contest was run, and best of luck to the final 100 entries. Some of the exerpts I read were quite amazing.

Now, with a PW review, and some nice things said about the exerpt from nice people, we move on to the marketing end of things. Let's see what walls it might stick to, once flung.

The contract negotiations for the English language rights to Solomon's Grave with a small Canadian press are hopefully winding down so I can give the news offiically. And as I mentioned before, Plague of Darkness is hitting the German/Austrian shelves via Otherworld Verlag late 2008 / early 2009. Can't complain here, I guess. Things are moving on the international front. :-)

No other news to report. Of course, after a big letdown like the Amazon contest thing, I always second-guess my choice of direction - stay with Plague of Locusts or move back to the mainstream path. Wish I knew what to do, but at least now I recognize this for what it is and know to ignore the instinct to bounce like a pinball all over the place. I'll write whatever I want, and see where things fall. Obviously, one genre or another isn't really going to be any easier, so best enjoy whatever it is I'm writing and have fun with it. The rest will work itself out, or not. I may remain an obscure entry in some 21st Century in Horror tome in 2099, maybe not. Time will tell. As long as I enjoy doing it, am happy in the process (at least as I write), and do right in the eyes of God and my family, whatever that might be, I guess I'm doing OK overall, eh?

And a story I wrote... gasp... twenty years ago, about an evil clown in the basement and a boy named Billy, kept alive in spirit for years by my friend Fran Bellerive, may actually grow from a lost weed into a tree of sorts, along with fellow writer L.L.Soares. We're looking at it, and seeing if a phoenix might rise out of the neglected ashes of the old story, lost for decades (literally) in a file drawer. Time will tell....

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