Time

At 24 years old I think I have accomplished a lot of what I set out to do in life: I finished college, got my first “career” job, got into Grad School, received my security clearance, and became a published author. There were also some things that happened that I didn’t expect (*sap alert*) like falling in love and getting engaged. All in all I am pretty damn happy with the way my life has turned out so far. Then I sit and think what I now have going on in my life: all the projects I’m working on, school, work, planning a wedding, and the process of buying a house. To say I’m a little overwhelmed now would be an understatement.

Despite all of this, I still have these grand endeavors that I would like to accomplish; most of these have to do with my writing. My passion for writing is perhaps the strongest out of any of my other passions. What’s great about this is I can use my other passions in my writing. My mind is always running with different ideas for existing series I have or new ones. Currently I am working on a couple different things: a sequel to Dark Cell, a sequel to Summer’s Hollow, a crime drama, prequels to Loose, and any random short story ideas that pop into my head. The biggest problem I have is I’ll watch a movie, watch a TV show, or read a book and think: huh I’d love to write a story like that.

Recently I just got caught up on the show “Hell on Wheels” which is a fantastic look at a fictional life out west after the civil war. This is a time period that has always fascinated me but I never really had a chance to write about. While watching the show I kept thinking of different stories I could add into the show, different characters, mixing of cultures and religions, etc. My studies in anthropology almost always pop up in my writing and I thought it would be awesome to work on some stories that focus on the main culture areas that I studied in my archaeology classes: The North American Indians. In addition, I saw how the freed slaves interacted with the other workers especially when it came to their religions. I thought throwing some Hoodoo practices into those scenarios would be awesome.

All these ideas that I have are awesome but there’s one problem: time, I don’t have much of it. Well really, I don’t have any of it. My head is on the verge of explosion as it is and I’ll be lucky if I have five minutes to sit down between now and wedding (4 months from today!!!). This means that unfortunately some things have to be put on hold, namely my publishing. Writing is actually the easy part. Coming up with stories and putting the pen to paper comes naturally to me. Editing and formatting though things that I actually do at my “day job,” are the hard parts. There is a lot of work that goes into all of that; hell remember when it took me 3 years just to do those things for Summer’s Hollow?

The bulk of it boils down to this: I may not get around to publishing another book this year. Doesn’t mean I won’t be writing (it’s what keeps me sane), just means that the finished products might not be ready for the public for a while. You know what? I’m okay with that. As I started out with, I have accomplished quite a lot in my life and I still have A LOT of life left to continue those things. For now I’m going to focus on the things that are going in my life now: all the insanely awesome and life changing events that will be taking place this year. Who knows, maybe in the midst of all that Dark Hall or Return to Summer’s Hollow will make appearances. So I’m asking you all to stick with me through these life changing occurrences and know that my mind never stops churning out stories.

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