Flogging the Work-in-Progress

Digging out of my book hole in the process

So hey, the production over here has been lacking of late, I apologize for that, but it’s for a good reason. On the writing front I’ve been really busy and on the reading front I’m a bit stalled. Here’s what’s up:

Writing

I’m behind schedule on a manuscript that I wanted to have ready by Memorial Day, so I’m grinding to make up time when I can. It’s the Thanksgiving fantasy novel that I drafted in 2020 and am improving on now. Since I have a subscription to X/Twitter, I’m using its built-in AI function (Grok) for on-the-fly research, and damn is that thing useful.

As always, stress-test your answers with AI and be as specific as you can with your queries, but in terms of time saved, it’s way more precise than just a search engine hit, and it can even translate phrases from English into the Eastern Algonquian dialect. I’m including bits and pieces of it here and there, nothing major, I just thought it would give the book some extra flavor as needed. I am stoked about this one as it’s for Ark Press and I think I have a good shot of making it in.

Later this year I’ll do a big post about Thanksgiving books that I’ve read over the years which have helped me out on this project.

Reading

I’ve read fewer than 30 books this year, I’ve had too many in a row that I didn’t care to push through. I have a few on deck that I’m excited about and I’ve pushed them to the head of the line as it were, including Jill Bearup’s funny medieval novel and a few Warhammer properties, among others.

Also I need to pick at the Washington bio some more. I’m not going to worry too much about posting those on the channel, I’ll just put them here for the Substack crew. Thanks for following that last one, it did pretty well here.

Comics

I’ve fallen even deeper into this hobby over the last several months, and most of what I’ve made time to read has been comics. I just love it and I’ve found some really great books to follow. I was going to start a second YouTube channel just for comic reviewing, but I really don’t want to fall down a rabbit hole of excessive production, so I’ve started doing comics on the main channel again. Follow there for updates, as always.

Thanks guys. Stay tuned.