With the day job moving well away from the holiday rush and back towards some semblance of sanity, my self-imposed exile from all things writing too seems ready to come to an end. I'm thankful for the reprieve. Like stories that gnaw on your brain until you get it out of your head, there are more leisurely things that tend to do the same thing while you're toiling away being all productive and all that nonsense. For me, those things that I kind of crave for are the things I used to enjoy back when I had this funny thing called "free time." Sure, I have a little here and there, but I somehow managed to rewire my brain over the last several years into thinking that if I wasn't writing with that free time, it was wasted and therefore, as George Carlin once said: "it's bad for ya."
One of my old hobbies was playing video games, and I did get the chance to do a little bit of that over the last couple of months. UNCHARTED 4: A THIEF'S END was a fun getaway (though it did drag and get repetitive in parts), and I'd been hankering to lay the Bat-smackdown on baddies in BATMAN: ARKHAM KNIGHT again. I'm currently whipping through the PS4 remake of SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS, and yowza, does that game boggle my eyes all over again with its pretty new coat of paint. Absolutely stunning. I do want to play FATAL FRAME: MAIDEN OF BLACK WATER before I soldier back onto the battlefield again, so we'll see if I can keep that nagging urge to work at bay a little longer.
So here's what's on the horizon for 2018. Once I get my butt back in gear, it's nose to the grindstone on self-edits for Eyes of Odyssium #2, followed by the mandatory round of professional edits. While I'm doing my edits, I very much hope my contracted work comes in soon so I can finally release the MUCH-delayed IN DARKNESS AND LIGHT shorts collection.
Also, I've already started plotting hard for Eyes of Odyssium #3, which will be my SIXTH (holy crap, how did that happen?) novel-length book in the series. I've got the ending for that pretty well squared away, but I suppose it needs a beginning and a middle or something like that, doesn't it? So yeah, I'll be working on that too.
As of now, the planned release date for Eyes of Odyssium #3 is completely up in the air, considering things have gone wonky with the Collection release. The Collection WILL release this year--I've got it slotted in to appear at MSP ComiCon 2018 in May, if I get a spot there. Eyes #3 may release this year...or it may not.
But it's not all doom and gloom. Very little of it is, actually. Despite the hiccups, Odyssium is still alive and well. I often wonder anytime I step away from it for any period of time if my drive and passion to go on will still be there when I come back to it. I'm happy to say I'm excited at how Eyes #4 is starting to take shape in my mind, and I'm eager to pick through Eyes #3 in the edits so I can take a good look at what the heck I wrote last year.
Till next time, take care!
- C