Wow! When was the last time I was in here posting about what’s going on with all that’s going on?

1) Sputtery Truck: Yes, it was sputtery truck again. Dag nab it. But the Millican helped me figger it out once more and after replacing a bad coil (remember that I replaced all of those?) sputtery truck stopped with all the suptteriness and once again is happy. One day I hope it’ll stop acting up and demanding attention from me, but he, who knows what that’ll happen.

2) Moving: This might be something in my very near future. I will keep you posted. This isn’t a bad thing. This is a good thing. Jay might have an office one day soon! WOO WOO!

3) Writing: Last week I suffered from work. It ate up my brain and made it extremely difficult to get anything done. Well, that and a large number of personal things (see #2) that kept me coming and going and losing track of time all together. My hope is that next week will afford me at least some time to sit down and make the keys go clickety-clack and get further ahead with my latest project. Writing about Giant Robots is AWESOME! I wish I had this idea before, but hey, the stars aligned, my brain fired the right synapi, and POW! I’ve now got Giant Robots living in my brain along with all the other characters.

If I keep pace, and stay on schedule for this year and next, J.R. Murdock will be putting out a glut of books in 24 months. Already I’ve got 4 out, and another 7 on the way (all completely written and in various stages of edits/getting covers/etc). But I have many more in my head screaming to get out. To give you a quick idea, the Supernatural Learning series will see 3 more titles this year and 4 next year. Those are short and I can write them quickly, and I have a blast writing them. I also have an idea for another such series that will be intended for younger readers that will be around the same length (20,000-25,000 words) and I’ve got 5 I want to write in that series over the next two years. And, of course, I’ve got Billy II, Of Gnomes and Dwarves II, Life of Lists, Almost-Super Heroes, V&A III, To Fall From the Sky, Golden West Season 2. I’ve got so many ideas and my spreadsheet is bursting at the seams!

Yes, my PLAN is to write at least 365,000 words a year. I know I can keep up the output. It’s just a matter of not getting distracted. I hope to write even more than that, but we’ll have to see how it goes. On a good day I’m sitting and putting out 5,000 words. On a bad day I’ll only get out 1,000. Then I’ve had a series of missed days that are hurting me more than you can possibly know. Obviously writing these blog posts slows me down, but I feel the need to empty my brain of all these thoughts just to help keep them straight.

4) Submitting: Yes, I’m going to self-pub everything. I’m going to blog as much as I can. But I’m submitting short stories to major magazines for exposure. To try and get my name out there and get people talking about me. I want to try and generate some word of mouth about my works.

The bad news, no new acceptances. The good news? I’ve gotten better rejections. I’ve also had stories held for a lot longer than your standard rejection. What do I mean by longer? Meaning at least twice as long as a standard rejection (I’ve done my own tracking over the years and I have also checked the Grinder to see what others are averaging). What do I mean by ‘better rejections’? I mean that I’m getting different form letters. One actually said “After being reviewed and held for additional consideration…” This tells me that I was damned close to getting that one published. I, of course, re-read it and sent it right back out.

Suddenly I’ve found myself in a strange land where I don’t have any ideas for short stories. Everything I want to write is novel (or novella). I also can’t think of any good shorts I’d like to write, but I know when those ideas come, I’ll write them up and get them into the submission wheel.

5) RSS Reader: gReader has been my feed reader for some time. I was sad to see that Google decided to stop supporting it (coming June or July). I moved over to Feedly after much research and trying out other readers. This wasn’t something I wanted to stop and spend time to perform, but I needed to make sure I took care of this before I didn’t have the ability to take care of it.

6) Keyboard search 2013: I’m a tech geek. What can I say. I’m love me some technology. I’ll write up a much longer post much like I did with my mouse search. I need a keyboard that can stand up to endless hours of typing and bashing out words. I also want one that’s got programmable buttons, back lighting would be nice. Something that’s not obscenely large. I don’t mind weird looking (you’ve seen my mouse, right?). I’ve also like it to be mechanical. Yes, I know that means it’ll be a little louder than what I currently use, but that also means it’ll last longer. Like I said, I’ll write all those up later and get it posted with pictures and my thoughts about the whole process. Should be fun.

7) My Favorite Daughter: The kid is playing volleyball and still having a great time of it. She’s off next week fro Spring Break and we’ll be taking a trip up to Lemoore to visit family for Easter. Should be a great time. We haven’t been up there since June and it’ll be fun to take a long drive. Now that Sputtery Truck is cooperating I feel better about the drive.

8) Work: Yes, work has been eating my brain. The good news, much of what I’ve been toiling away at is going to a head and will be going out soon enough. It’s been beat up, wrung out, and stomped on enough to make my head spin and it seems that each time I sit down, my instant messenger is going off. If I try to get up, my instant messenger is going off. I’ll have a steady flood of email. I’ll be working on a defect. Trying to get things under control only to have more dumped on my plate. Thankfully things are starting to slow back down to a normal pace and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

That being said, yes, I work for AT&T. I’ve said this before. Sadly, the West did not ratify a contract so I’m on alert should a strike happen. If a strike happens I could be called out at a moment’s notice to fill the spot of a union member who’s out. That’s part of the job and I need to be ready. Needless to say, it puts me a little on edge being that I’d like to go out of town next week. We’ll see how that goes. Both sides are at the bargaining table trying to hammer out a deal.

I think that gets you up to speed on all that I’ve been up to. Whew. I need to stop letting so much time pass by between posts. Oh, I also need to post a movie review of the Groods. That was a fun movie. 🙂

Until Next Week!

WOO WOO!