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It’s been a very long time, hasn’t it?
Hey Crew.
Let me start by saying thank you to everyone who is still around and an extra thank you to those who asked about me in the comments, via email, and on social media. I got all your messages, but don’t think I replied to all of them. I’m humbled by those that still reach out. It means a lot to me.
My last post here was November 2022. A year and a half ago. I’ve disappeared from time to time, but never for that long. I do owe you an explanation. I won’t go into depth, but it’s been a long journey. Let’s step back in time a bit, shall we?
2020. The year the pandemic started. I’d put into motion where 2021 would be an epic year with monthly releases. I was writing nearly daily. Things were firing on all cylinders. Going into 2021, my writing had slowed as I focused on putting out the books and getting everything ready. Short stories, were coming out. Books were coming out. I was trying to generate excitement around what I was doing.
Eighteen months went by, but things didn’t take off much at all. I made roughly $150 in sales throughout the year, which is good, but it was in fits and spurts. I’d get people excited I had a new book out, but not many folk were buying the books. I’d done something wrong or I was growing impatient.
So, I switched gears. I started putting out the audio books. I put them up everywhere. YouTube, Spotify, the website. I started up Patreon. Sadly, this was a HUGE time sink and nothing came of it. I had a depressing number of views. I grew quite frustrated.
I stopped writing. I stopped posting on the blog. I stopped pretty much everything related to writing. I even stopped reading.
Then our landlord asked us to move out. He needed his house back. GAH! Bad timing. We had 6 months to find a place which was ample time, but it was still a stress we didn’t need at that moment.
After we moved, love the new place, we got involved with a lawsuit which I won’t go into details, but that settled to our benefit (totally unrelated to the old landlord or the move). That was more stress that wasn’t needed.
I kept thinking about getting back to writing, but couldn’t get my brain to focus. I started playing Minecraft. It was mind numbing and I didn’t have to think about anything, but I wasn’t feeling productive. So I started streaming my gaming sessions.
Then I discovered Fortnite. Yeah. I like Fortnite. I really like Fortnite. I started streaming that, but much like everything else I was doing, I wasn’t getting any traction at all on what I was doing.
Come December, 2023, my co-author, Mike Plested reached out. He’d also been in a rut and wanted to restart Jack Kane book 3. THIS is what I needed. Or so I thought.
The week after Mike contacted me and we spoke, I’d gotten carbon monoxide poisoning. An event I don’t go into as I’d had to relive this so many times. Suffice to say, I was overcome, nearly died, and was lucky to make it out the other end. Spent 4 hours in a hyperbaric chamber and am thankfully doing well.
Then the job decided everyone needed to work in one location. That location is on the opposite coast of where I live. By some blessing, I was one of a very few select people to be blessed with a teleworking position. But again, stress piled on top of stress.
Thankfully, much of that has been resolved. Finances are getting back in order. Life is getting back in order. I wrote a couple of thousand words in Jack Kane 3 and got that back to Mike so he can do the next chapter (that’s how we write those books). I’m in a far better headspace. I’ve got a lot to talk about and I finally feel like now is the time to start blogging again. I won’t promise daily, but let’s shoot for weekly.
Yes, it’s been a very long road with a lot of downs and very few ups. But the future is bright and I’m glad to be here to enjoy it. Things are in a very different perspective. I’m going to do what I enjoy, when I enjoy doing in, and slowly get back into writing, producing audio books, and doing it because I want to, not because I expect to suddenly have 10,000 people discover my work and buy my entire back catalog.
If you’d read this far, again, thank you for being here. I hope to keep doing this for a very long time. Sorry if this was a bit rambly, but we’re get our thought process back in order and get back into this blogging grove. It’s like riding a bike, right?
J.R.
Latest book I bought
I’ve been a Scott Sigler Junkie since the first episode of Earthcore dropped on the Dragon Page oh so many years ago. I’m slow, but finally have the ebook for the sequel.
First book I finished reading this year.
If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you know “The dog” ate a few of my signed books. One of those was a book signed by Neil Gaiman. I’d gotten that one signed when I met him at World Fantasy Con 2011. I was sad the book was gone.
Neil sent me a personal message after I’d made that blog post. Something I never anticipated nor expected. I shared the message with the boy, whose dog ate the book. He shared the post with is sister. Again, if you’ve read along, she didn’t believe that he’d emailed Mr. Gaiman and laughed at him. She also didn’t believe that Neil had sent me a personal message.
As a joke, she’d gotten me two Neil Gaiman books for Christmas. I share with her the story and the message Neil had sent me and showed that it was from his verified account. She now believed the story, but still thought her little brother was silly for emailing Mr. Gaiman and expecting a response.
Art Matters, because your imagination can change the world, is a collection of 3 essays by Neil. Having heard the Make Good Art speech he’d given (on YouTube) I heard the entire book in his voice and read it with his slow, confident reading style. It was a joy to sit down and enjoy this book, much like the books will tell you to read fiction for enjoyment as it’ll help your imagination and help you understand empathy.
A wonderful book to start off 2022. Let’s see what book I finish next.
Oh, for those wondering about the card, I bought a deck of Star Wars playing cards to use as bookmarks. As I have a tendency to read a LOT of books and sometimes multiple books at the same time, I needed bookmarks. I didn’t want to spend a large chunk of money on several bookmarks, so I bought a deck of playing cards. As I read a book and finish it, I’ll post a picture of the book (be it physical or ebook) and a picture of the playing card bookmark.
I also purchased a steampunk tarot deck that I will use for each short story I read this year. Let’s see how far I can get through both decks, eh?
Under the Whispering Door – TJ Klune
![Under the Whispering Door by [TJ Klune]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51183gzLHAL.jpg)
I’ve had this one pop up in my feed several times. I’ve read the description. I’ve read a couple of reviews. It was only $3.99, so I grabbed a copy. I know nothing about TJ Klune, but Under the Whispering Door looked like something I’d be in to, so, why not.
The End?
Folks, since getting back from all those vacations I took over the summer, and not doing 5 a Day With Jay during that time, I’ve done a LOT of thinking about it. Mainly stopping doing it.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I still enjoy making the videos and chit chatting with everyone, even if there isn’t any chit chat back. If I didn’t enjoy making the videos and doing this blog, I’d stop in a heartbeat. Why keep doing something if you’re not enjoying yourself?
What it comes down to is fairly simple.
Time.
There aren’t enough hours in the day. Currently I’m getting up early for work because we’re losing another team member. One of the senior team members. Losing him will be a challenge. We have calls that start at 6am (my time as he’s on the East Coast) so we can start transferring his duties to others on the team. We also record those sessions as he won’t be around for questions and we’ll need some sort of knowledge base to deal with everything once he’s gone.
That’s put a lot of stress on me as my boss also left the company. Currently, I’m the one running the team until the replacement takes over. That person will be starting next month. This means on top of getting people on the team up to speed on the person leaving, I need to get the new supervisor up to speed on everything that’s happening with the team currently as well as giving him a history of what the team has been up to getting to this point in time.
It’s a lot to deal with.
When I posted last night that I was tired, I was. Mentally completely exhausted. I always said I’d be transparent with this blog and the video series. My goal is not to ghost you any more. I also want to keep blogging daily as it helps me keep my mind clear.
That all said, I’m going to stop 5 a Day With Jay for the time being. I do plan on switching to a weekly format, perhaps 30-45 minutes. I don’t want to stop making the videos, but I cannot keep doing 5 a week as I once was. There just aren’t enough hours in the day right now. I’m falling behind on my writing, my bass practice, and my reading. Yes, I love doing the videos, but something needs to be cut to help me get back on track.
I will keep doing the blog. I’m having fun writing these up every day and now that I’m telling stories from my past, perhaps they’ll even be more interesting. My overall goal is to make this a blog worth coming to and reading and not just me posting random ramblings.
That’s all I’ve got today. Over the coming weeks, things will start to lighten up around here. I’m glad you’re here and I hope you’ll stick around.
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
Lazy Sunday.
Oh, these two have the right idea. The small one is Koda, our dog. The bigger puppy is Mya. Mya is sleeping, Koda was sleeping. Took this picture a few days ago.
Mya is the one that found the tennis ball with a plant growing out of it.
Spent the morning listening to a Pop-Up course from Dean Wesley Smith. Now I’ve got a story in my head that I must write. Darn it. I’m sure that’ll happen with the other pop-ups as well. This isn’t a bad thing. I want to write, on average, two short stories per month.
The biggest take away from Dean’s pop-up, for me, was building the world in small bits. Not trying to do it all in one chapter. That’s something I tried to do with past books and that always failed. Tell the story first, let the world flesh itself out around the story.
The short story I’m going to write will take place in the Of Gnomes And Dwarves universe as the pop-up was for Epic Fantasy. In fact, I think I’ll be doing a number of short stories based around Of Gnomes And Dwarves to help me build up that world and get ready to write those books. Should be interesting.
I had written a short story that was supposed to take place in that world. Kance Encounter. Kance is an assassin/thief character who ends up doing odd jobs for a wizard. I blame Piers Anthony for me wanting to write stories with punny names and punny titles.
At any rate, I’m off to do some reading. I finished I Am The Man by Scott Ian this morning, read a few Tobias Buckell short stories I’ve been collecting from Patreon over the years, and I’m about to dig into something else. Suggestions?
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
J.R. Murdock 