August Update

I know it's been about a month since I last posted - and I do apologize for that - but I've been knee-deep in some personal matters, and I've also been taking a long hard look at the projects and tasks on my plate and have had to make some hard decisions on what is worth doing and what is worth forgetting about. My first and foremost priority is to write. Write. And beyond that, I want to reach people with that writing using my website, social media, and word of mouth. But those things have to come secondary to the writing.

First off, time to celebrate because I actually finished Camp NaNoWriMo! This was my first year doing the campy summer version of National Novel Writing Month, and to be honest I didn't think I was going to reach my goal of 43,112 words to get my third Expired Reality novel past the 100,000 word count mark, but I did it! And now I have a legitimate amount of story material to craft my novel from, so hopefully I can get this third volume in the series - which has been in the works for a few years now - onto the bookshelves soon.

The second piece of news I want to share is that I've made the executive decision to move the genre community - The Crossover Alliance - to a Ning based network. Since it's creation, The Crossover Alliance community has been residing on SocialGo. And while SocialGo is a really great company to start out on, Ning has many more options for social networking and content which I think will only benefit the community once things are moved over. The new site will be ready in the next couple weeks, and ample notice will be given to give time for the shift from one platform to the other.

And the third solid piece of news I'd like to share is the decision to merge the two blogs that I currently run. Right now, this blog is my main blog where I talk about my writing projects and the writing process, but I also have another blog - Of Dreams and Faith - where I've been blogging about my faith and the incredible journey God brought me and my family through to get us here to the Bay Area. I've come to the conclusion that there's really no reason to keep my faith and my writing separate from one another, especially if everything I am writing nowadays is either edgy Christian speculative fiction or a non-fiction account of my faith walk with God.

Aside from those three major announcements, and the work I am currently doing on my non-fiction book, Of Dreams and Faith, which chronicles my faith walk with God, I also have some side projects that I need to start tackling - such as the resurrection of my email newsletter, some revamping of certain items on my website, and some episodic and short story writing I want to start cranking out.