It's been a while since I posted anything on here, mostly because life came up and bit me on the ass. With the loss of my mother over a year ago, I used this blog to kind of get out some of my feelings about the situation. It helped me in my grieving to put out a couple of poems, but one side-effect was that I simply didn't want to come back to this blog because the pain of those writings are still floating around here.

But time heals all, and I'm moving on/moved on. Time to resurrect this blog. So I suppose I'll begin with a little update since the last time I published on here. In the last year, I've written hundreds of thousands of words... those words have turned into several books and several screenplays. One screenplay is even in the process of being turned into a movie. That movie is entitled The Cemetery People. I think horror/exploitation fans will like it, but the general populace will find it too distasteful. I'm ok with that.

I've written a book about the Pied Piper of Hamelin. It's sitting in a figurative drawer, aging, so I can come back and revise it.

I re-branded my This Rotten World series, taking the first two books and putting them into one volume, simply titled This Rotten World. Honestly, it's the way it should have always been. I wrote and published This Rotten World: Let it Burn, the second entry (or third, depending on how you look at it) in my zombie epic.

For those of you wondering why I re-branded This Rotten World, it had to do with the performance of the books. While I love the original covers of the books, it's plain that horror fiction readers didn't find the covers all that enthralling. So, I decided I would kill two birds with one stone, toss This Rotten World and This Rotten World: We All Fall Down into one book, and then get new covers for the series. It worked. The books are moderately successful for an unpublicized author selling zombie fiction. With no coverage and no reviews, the books have somehow managed to find a life of their own. That feels good.

I also published a book called The Abbey, which was a slight departure for me in more ways than one. It is easily my most mainstream novel. It's the type of book that everyone can enjoy if you're into horror and mysteries. It received some moderate success as well, but it's still out there waiting for its audience to find it.

In addition to that, it was also the first book that I published under my real name. Ditching The Vocabulariast moniker was a whole lot easier than I thought. I always thought the name was cool for a movie reviewer, but for a writer who is actually trying to persuade readers that he is serious, it was probably kind of a turnoff. I get that. I'm happy to be working under my real name now, but honestly, the fact that I now have like six books under my old name sort of works against my notoriety and ability to build an audience. A piece of advice for those of you out there: If you're going to use a pseudonym, choose a realistic name and stick with it. In the indie publishing world, it pays to keep your name the same.

Right now, I'm currently at work on a book that I think people will dig. It's called Killing the Cult, and it's a John Milius-esque celebration of a man that won't quit. It's coming along nicely, but I'm still fleshing out the world as I'm going.

I feel like I should be finished with a rough draft by this summer, and I'll probably finalize it by the winter. The real question is... should I seek a publisher or not? I'm sort of torn on this one. On the one hand, I like that I'm building my writing career by myself. On the other hand, I would probably be a little further along with the help of a publisher. But what are you gonna do? I'm an impatient man. When I see a line at the gas station, I skip it and go to the next one. I only shop at grocery stores that have self-checkout. Publishers that make me wait three or four months for a response, if they even bother to give you one... well, that's not me.

I often tell my wife, I just need to find someone to take my finished work when I'm done and shop it around. Some people call that an agent, but again... even to find an agent, I've got to wait around for responses. Ridiculous.

Oh well, that's life. I'll just keep plugging away. Good luck to you, and I hope you enjoy my books and my writing. It's good to be back.