life | Scott's Author Blog

Well another week and another update. November has turned out to be a month containing a fair amount of SUCK. My wife had strep throat for the first week (without knowing it) and I had it this past week. It took me out of action for a few days in every way conceivable. But I soldiered on with the days I did have.

As you can see in the picture I am still growing my mustache for Movember. It’s garnered some looks and comments (and a few laughs) but no money for the cause. I think men’s health is a very important cause and I’m sure you do too. If you’ve got a buck or two to donate please don’t hesitate to drop by my page and hit the donate button (thereafter filling in the pertinent details to make the proper exchanges from your money source to their income source). I know I’d appreciate it.

I’m also firmly committed to finishing NaNoWriMo. My current official word count is 15,953 which is a significant increase from last week’s 6,585. It’s not anywhere near the 25K I need to be at at the end of today (the halfway point), but I’m not ready to call it quits just yet. In fact if it gets to be looking bad for the “home team” I’ll just pull some inspiration from Brand Gamblin, a favorite writer of mine, and a blog post he dropped recently. If I’m gonna lose, I’m gonna “Lose With Style”.

Finally, I just thought I’d spread the word a little about Issue Three of Flagship. It dropped a couple of days latter than we would have liked, but it needed that extra layer of polish. We want it to be right for you lucky buyers. Have a gander at the contents:

I particularly like “Revival” and “Worse The The Disease”. I voiced the audio for the former, an interesting sci-fi piece told in first person. The aforementioned Brand Gamblin (Team Them and Evil Genius) wrote the latter. I championed it even though it isn’t precisely in Flagship’s wheelhouse and Zach and the team agreed that publishing it as a preview for Abattoir was a good idea. So if you buy it for no other reason, buy it to prove there’s a market for smart horror in e-zines. I think the price is write and those that filled out our survey seemed to concur.

Heck buy a few copies and send them to friends as a Christmas present! There’s a great Christmas themed piece in there as well.

Okay that’s enough pimpage for now. Please leave encouragements, attaboys, and death threats (HT to Dan Sawyer) in the comments or in one of the previously mentioned financial transactions!

So here we are at the beginning of week two of November/Movember. I figured I’d do a little update here to let you know where I am in my various endeavors (anything to duck writing on my NaNo novel I guess).

Thing One, Movember – As you can see in the picture, I am growing a mustache. Why am I growing a mustache? Well so fair it’s made my kids giggle. Reason enough to a degree, I suppose. But that’s not all. If you’ve been paying attention to ether my Twitter feed or my Facebook posts I hope you’ve seen a like to my Movember page. What the heck is all that about? Well, I and a bunch of other people around the world are raising money to benefit prostate cancer research. I hope that you’ll donate. As of today, no one has. I know things are tough and so while I’m tempted to let that get me down, I won’t. If I don’t raise any money I will be disappointed, but it’s early days yet. It’s important to raise awareness so even if you don’t or can’t give, go here and learn what you (if you’re a dude) and/or the men in your life should be doing to stay healthy.

Thing Two, NaNoWriMo – I’m (in theory) writing a novella this month. My progress on it, thanks to familial illnesses and helping to get issue three of Flagship out, not to mention some laziness, has been less than I had hoped. This time last year I was at 12,857 words. My plan was to be at 14,000 both this year and last year. If you’re on target you should be at 10,002 by the end of day seven. My word count is at 6,585. Again, the temptation is to be frustrated/worried/annoyed. I’m working really hard not to give in to that. I have a good plan and I like my story so far. I just need to work it. Now that issue three has been put to bed and everyone is healthy I think I can surge forward.

So that’s what’s going on. Thanks for reading and feel free to kick me in the butt when you see me around the net or in real life!