State of the Voss

Jesus H. Christ, it’s been a crazy couple months. I’m sorry I kind of vanished like that, but life has been in pretty massive turmoil. However, I have been working, so there’s that. I have good news on that front… but first, the less than good news that’s kept me a bit distracted.

There’s a couple things that sort of conspired to make this mess. The biggest one has been the dogs with cancer. I talked about this in my last newsletter (Which was admittedly forever and a half ago), but we’ve had two dogs with tumors in the past couple months. One of them was a benign little mammary tumor, so that was just a surgery and she was good. The other one was a grade 3 histiocytoma… not quite as easy. Poor little guy went through a month of radiation, and he’s getting chemo every 10 days until they’re sure that he’s good to go. As you can imagine, that held quite a bit of my attention. For a while. But we’re settling into a routine around here again.

So, on to the good news. I’ve definitely not forgotten about Evenstad Media Presents. This cancer adventure (Let’s call it that.) put the brakes on a bit, but I officially can give you some actual information on this. Are you ready? The Tunnels, Evenstad Media Presents #4, is written. It’s edited and it’s formatted and all that happy whatnot. I’ve got the art request form in with my cover artist, so once that’s done, I’ll be able to get it up on the ‘Zon, get the print book put together, and it will (finally) be in your hot little hands.

I think The Tunnels is the best book in the series since The Park. I know I should love all my books equally, but… this one. Without giving too much away, this book sees a lot of long-running plot threads come to a head, and it sets us all up for a strong run to the final book (#7). Things start to get really shaken up in this book, and they only get more and more shaken until the series is over, which just excites the crap out of me.

Beyond that, I’ve started working off of a yearly schedule. I mean, sure, it starts in July instead of January, but it lasts a year. Not important. What is important is what’s on it. By next June, I should have Evenstad #5 and #6 done and either out or ready to ship out very shortly, and then it goes on to the final installment. I also have Rings of Injustice, the third book in my big, sweeping sci-fi series (That I still haven’t published. Don’t worry, that’s coming soon, too.) on the schedule, as well as five books for The Other Me. I figured I can do about 9-10 books each year as long as I stick to my schedule.

Anything else? Umm… well, I’ll be at some conventions and such in the area with the Northwest Authors Co-Op. I believe our next event is at the end of September, for V-Con in Vancouver, BC. And I’ll be presenting a workshop at the Idaho Writers League conference in Couer d’Alene and at the Moses Lake Public Library Comic-Con in Moses Lake… at the library. Go figure. If you’ll be at or around any of those events, go ahead and swing on over and say hi!

I believe that’s it. I’ll make sure to keep y’all much more updated than I did the past couple months… unless something completely insane happens again. Then I may disappear for a bit. But barring the unforeseen? I’ll see you on the bestseller lists (Maybe… hopefuly?).

Voss

The One Where Voss Shares Too Much

(Sorry. Couldn't resist the Friends reference.)

The ground is covered in a sheet of snow, I have four half-drunk bottles of wine in my kitchen, and I keep scribbling out 2015 and correcting it to 2016. Seems like an average New Year to me. Although I’m really hoping not. I’m hoping for a kick-ass New Year this time around, and it appears to not be sucking totally right now (Knock on wood.).

Now, I’m going to give a hat tip to the elephant in the room before I continue on with things that are a little more fun. The third Evenstad Media book is coming, I promise. There was a bit of a snafu on the production side of things, so it’s going to be a bit delayed. Good news for anyone who needs to catch up, but bad news for anyone who’s been waiting for this one to release, so I do apologize. At the very latest, it’ll be out by mid-February, but a lot sooner if I get my way.

So, what about the year going forward? Well, Evenstad four is also on the docket, though I’m keeping it pretty well under my hat right now. Details will come when we get closer to the actual release date for that one (Some time this summer, unless gremlins gum up the works on this one, too. Here’s hoping not.). And, with The King Jester Trilogy totally finished at long last, I’ll be able to give some more focus to other ideas. Old ideas. Pretty ideas.

If you’ve been here for a while with me, you might remember the odd mention of Rings of Treachery here and there over the years. Well, it still exists, but I’ve vowed that I’m going to put it out this year, come hell or high water. In the interest of full disclosure, it’s currently out on submission with a publisher, so I should hear back within a few months… hopefully. If that works out, then I might have to bend a little on my schedule. Let’s say ‘published or contracted’ this year instead, yeah?

After that, depending on the phases of the moons and what the chicken intestines tell me (Or, you know, whatever I feel like), I could pick up a number of other projects. I have an old book about puppets that’s been weighing on my mind lately (Though that may just be because the puppet army is taking over Radcon this year…). Or I might turn to something a little less well-formed and see where that leads me, in the end. It’s really open. That’s what happens when a series closes off. Something that’s sort of filled your attention for months on end is finally gone, and you begin to see past it to what you can do next. Completely the opposite of reading a series. Then you just sort of feel lost and hungry for more books that don’t exist.

Or maybe that’s just me.

I’ll also be picking up on writing short stories again so I can spread tiny versions of my writing far and wide. Kind of like a plague, but slightly less deadly. Very slightly.

And when it comes to things in a non-writing sense, I’ve made some decisions about the year ahead as well. The main one is to have less anger and negativity. I tend to get rather upset with people, but it does me no good. So I’m working on it. Not to say I’ll turn all peaceful—anger is still an emotion and it’s still useful—but I’ll be more careful with how it comes out, and evaluate it more. See if it’s doing anything, or if it’s just causing me pain.

I’m also going to return to some of my other passions (This is where the part when the sharing begins. First and last warning.). I consider 2015 the year where I sort of got lost. There was really a lot of turmoil going on in my psyche at that point. I’d put back on all the weight I’d lost and shot back over 300 pounds. I wasn’t reading. I was even angrier than usual. I’d just moved away from most of my friends and family (It was really a good decision, but still. It’s hard no matter what.). I was readjusting, and things just started to drop off. I wasn’t reading anymore. I wasn’t singing anymore. I hadn’t played trombone in months and months. And eventually, that started to encroach on my writing. I hated doing it.

Eventually, I figured that I hated doing the actual writing work because I wasn’t doing anything else for myself. I used to say ‘If I’m not singing, then I know that something’s wrong.’ Except I ignored that advice and kept digging through the writing. The more I did it without anything else going on, the more I just hated doing it. And when I hated it, I hated myself a little more. The writing didn't suffer, just me.

Well, suffice it to say that’s over and done with, now. I’m not a New Year’s resolution kind of person, but I made some this year. Read more. Sing more. Make time for things that I’m passionate about. I still haven’t gotten around to belly dancing with any regularity again (Working on it.) and my trombone has only been out of the case once or twice in the past few weeks (And one of those times was to clean and oil it, so…), but it’s going to come. I’m determined not to fall into the Swamp of Sadness again this year.

Stupid horse…

So that’s my uncomfortable level of sharing. How about you? Are you taking 2016 as a chance to get shit back on track, or are you just going to continue to rock the socks off life? Let me know.

Voss