FULL BLEED: DOWN IN THE DESERT

Stopgap entry this week, I suppose.

Lots going on outside of stuff I'm obliged to self-promote. Two-day-drive through the plaguelands coming up because school is starting, don't you know. So it'll be like this week kinda doesn't exist.

I do however, have some oblique news about a project that I thought was dead for almost ten years. Well, it was dead. But it is very much alive now, not through my own actions, but on the part of one of the artists involved. Which means I've moved to hire a second artist to fill out the bridge story. It's possible that the work could be done this year, haven't firmed that up yet. Not sure what the final thing will look like, but I'm working to get it to as many people as possible.

But who knows what that looks like the day after WB brought the axe down on DC Comics. Or what DC will look like afterwards. There's always the promises of cuts for efficiency to generate growth. That's stuff you tell shareholders or to convnice the board that this really is the way forward. All I know is that a bunch of people who loved and spent their lives working in comics are now out of work without much of any warning during a rolling economic and health and national calamity. No good to see in any of that. Not to mention what happens when one of the two largest publishers driving traffic and filling shelves at direct market comics shops takes a hit like this. Not when there's really not much indication of a plan other than hedging for future growth.

But this project is a comic book one-shot, and there's precious few other places to sell that sort of thing. Suffice it to say that there'll be more news on that later on.

Additionally, I'm running point on promoting my mother's science fiction backlist coming back into print as ebooks, for the first time since the seventies and eighties. Those are coming up soon and I'll post official announcements and such when they happen. Trying to line up reviewers and coverage outlets right now, which is a long process of sifting through the sargasso of first through fourth generation book blogs and genre-focused sites.

In terms of my own work, I finished off the first draft of "The Stars are Made of Us," which is a HAZELAND-set novella that may be appended to QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS or may end up in ASPHALT TONGUES. That last one is a short story collection that I'm now, uhm, behind on. Originally hoped for drafing to be done by October, and at this point it'll be November maybe December, depending on edits for MY DROWNING CHORUS which are due soon. Just in time really.

Speaking of HAZELAND, the books and myself will be one of the sponsors of the upcoming Outer Dark Symposium on weird and horror fiction. Yes, I'm a little surprised, too. But the opportunity presented itself and they seem like pretty good people doing good work so I'm happy to help out a little. So I guess this counts as a convention appearance for this year? Yeah, I didn't think so, either.

Remember conventions?

Oh, and BLACK TRACE, which I should be doing pre-release contacts and reviews for. Though I wonder about that and if I shouldn't just release it and get it done. It won't be the one to move the needle but it is the one I should just let go of.

Otherwise, I'm just trying to hold things together, which I guess is as much as everyone else is doing in this insane and shifting landscape. And, frequently, acting against my own best interests. Luckily there's people around willing to give me a shove and point that out from time to time.