Administration: End of 2013 and Annoucements for 2014

This year is about over. Time to take stock of things.

A review of my statistics shows that most readers prefer the stories I wrote since 2010 over anything earlier, that most readers are Americans, and that my current traffic flow is--alas--periodically dominated by bots and other less-than-reputable sources. The weekly update schedule remains the best way for me to go, so that continues into 2014. So does the quarterly story schedule; this too will remain the case in 2014.

However, there will be one big change. Until May of this year, I was in graduate school pursuing my Master's Degree. I've enjoyed a nice break, and the whole finding-a-job thing is a pain in the ass, but nonetheless I've been meaning to get back into something big like writing my thesis paper. However, I did that entirely in Microsoft Word and that experience was enough to put me off of using it for any long-form writing projects. I am fortunate to have some tabletop game designers and published novelists as friends and acquaintances, and when they told me about Scrivener--and showed me a few videos about how to use it--I had to get myself a copy. Thanks to my folks, and some Amazon gift cards, that's now happening.

So, in addition to writing serialized short stories for the Chronicles, I will spend 2014 (in part) writing my third novel. (Yes, third; the first one I wrote for National Novel Writing Month some years ago and it got eaten by a hard drive failure, and the second is on my current hard drive because it is a dire first draft in need of revision before I so much as pass it off to a Beta Reader so I'm not inclined to revisit it, so this would be my third novel.) This novel is in addition to my serialized short stories for this 'blog, so I'm making myself quite busy.

No, I have no previews for you. I'm doing preliminary planning for the novel, so nothing solid there to say for now, and the stories will be a surprise for you folks. The first 2014 series starts next week, so you won't be waiting for long. Thanks for sticking with me so far, and I hope that you find next year's stories as enjoyable as the past ones.