First Quarter Down

I've been on vacation

Mar 30, 2025

Draw in an anime style: a man driving a red 2008 Dodge Durango with a huge turbocharger sticking out of the hood, racing down the highway in Oklahoma. The man has a shaved head, red beard, and aviator sunglasses.

All this crap courtesy of getimg.ai

Last week I put 3,000+ miles on my car when I returned to Utah for the first time since my move in 2022. That’s an example of a run-on sentence. It mirrors the scope of my drive. The Durango ran like a champ and I am grateful for it.

Draw in an anime style: a man hiking in the snow-covered mountains of Utah. The man has a shaved head, red beard, and aviator sunglasses.

The trip was great. Much as I love Oklahoma, Utah just completely mogs us for natural beauty. My brother told me when I moved that I would miss the mountains and he was right. That said, I don’t miss driving over them in winter. Give me tornadoes any day.

Draw in an anime style: a man angrily chasing a tornado on foot through a cornfield in Oklahoma. The man has a shaved head, red beard, and aviator sunglasses.

Anyway, now that March is wrapped, I’m looking at my progress bar for the year and things are going well, if not exactly how I mapped them out.

Reading

I’ve read 23 books this year (5 print). Only one has made the best-of list (SUNRISE ON THE REAPING.) I kind of like taking a slower approach with reading but I do need to back off of the podcasts and YouTube a little. I’ve been consuming a lot of fluff.

I have two longer books on deck for April, one of which is 54 hours on audio, but I will break it up with a few shorter readings. My reading of indie books might change, given the recent policy shift from Amazon (I won’t be buying Kindle books any more) but there are other ways of paying underemployed writers for their work. Most likely I’ll buy directly through email or something.

Writing

Draw in an anime style: a man sitting in a mechanic's garage, wearing coveralls, typing at a computer. The man has a shaved head, red beard, and aviator sunglasses.

Something very cool has happened to me in the last couple of years, and I attribute a lot of it to the reading of Louis L’Amour’s partial/incomplete works: my method has accelerated. Chalk it up to the amount of stuff I’ve read at this point, or maybe my 2024 flirtation with short stories. I can just write…better, faster. Writing a middle-grade fantasy really seems to have helped as well.

Couple that with a publisher’s interest in my Thanksgiving fantasy novel, and my loose hours are all spent at the keyboard, hammering words into the page. When I need a breather from that manuscript (personal deadline: Memorial Day) I come here and throw down a few posts on the Five-Minute Witchy War. (I’m behind on that, I’ll get something out soon.)

And just because I’m a bit of a massochist, I’ve also thrown my hat into the ring for Ark Press’s $10,000 contest (deadline: Oct 7.) The editors talked about their criteria for that in the video below (starts around halfway in.) I have a strong concept and I know I can have fun with the execution, so much so that even if it doesn’t make the cut, publishing it on my own will be a breeze, and I can make an excellent cover.

Drawing

Look, I’d love to dedicate time to this, but the cold hard revelation of 2025 is that I need to tighten my focus, and there’s more of a path toward artistic compensation on the writing track. One good drawing a month would be a tall order, one mediocre sketch per week is even asking a lot right now. I can do anything, but I can’t do everything, so I refuse to stress about it. I can still throw down something here and there and I probably will. I just won’t schedule it in with all my writing work on deck.

YouTube

I’ve definitely slowed down from last year, which I also don’t mind. I’d rather say something when I really have something to say, instead of talking just to be heard by the algorithm. Authenticity got me a following there and I’m going to stay on that path.

Subscribe to my channel and watch my reviews there.

Conclusion

Draw in an anime style: three identical men sitting at a table. The first man is reading a book. The second man is typing on a laptop. The third man is drawing in a sketchbook. The men are all completely bald, with red beards, and they wear aviator sunglasses.

Over the next three months I will read probably another twenty books, including one or two in print. I’ll finish the Thanksgiving fantasy and start the contest book. And I’ll have a few more drawings to show for it.

Finally, when I send the Thanksgiving book off, if I haven’t yet heard from the middle-grade publisher, I’ll drop them a line and see what’s up.

Thanks to those of you who have subscribed, and especially to those of you who’ve paid. Onward and upward.

Trucker Man Reads

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