Site Updates & Assorted Musing

I was thinking it would take just a few minutes to update my site this morning. Boy, was I wrong. Merely getting my GenCon schedule appropriately on the Appearances page took more than an hour! Much cross-indexing was involved, or it would have been faster. Anyway, if you’re planning to go to GenCon you now know where to find me. Mostly. I will probably be at the Paizo booth a little as well, and that’s not on the schedule yet. Of course you’ll also probably find me wandering around the hall of treasures trying not to buy things…

I still need to add Through the Gate in the Sea to the official book slider list at the top of the page. But at least my appearances are up to date. I’ll probably add more later in the year and early next year.

In other news, I’m a little closer to 50 years old now, which is pretty weird. I spent a lot of the last week driving all over Indiana on various errands, but I ate some great food, found some wonderful used books, and generally had a great time with the family (except my daughter, who I didn’t get to spend much time with — she couldn’t travel with us owing to her work schedule). I got less writing accomplished than I usually do over the course of a week, but I managed some anyway in some odd places. Remember, I’m the guy who outlined his last two Pathfinder novels while sitting in The Three Broomsticks restaurant in Harry Potter World or waiting for my daughter to get out of The Tower of Terror.

In other news, my wife, first reader and editor of my work, tells me that the first draft of book 2 of my new trilogy is cleaner and more sure-footed than any of the rough drafts of my previous books. I think part of that comes from experience, but I can’t help thinking that also stems in part from me having taken a crash course in all kinds of great hard-boiled and western writing courtesy of these old paperbacks I’ve been blathering about. God knows it’s not that long since she finished reading the first book, and this is a significant jump, so I’m inclined to believe reading all this stuff is a heavier influence. Good readin’ and good for ‘ya as well!