It's All About Writing, After All

Well, believe it or not, the reason I haven't posted in awhile is strictly due to the fact that I've been doing a lot of writing. That's my passion and it's what I love to do, so it was fantastic.

I worked a lot on Wreckchasers, a novel about two aircraft archeologists that go around looking for WWII-era crashes, who stumble across several mysteries that get them in trouble. There has been a ton of research involved and the writing has been hard work, because I put in a lot of historical stuff and then edit like a demon.

I also spent time wrapping up Secret of the Dragon's Claw, the 3rd book in the Dragon's Secrets series, and began really focusing on Secret of the Dragon's Scales, Book 4. My 12-year-old son, who is my consultant on what's funny and what isn't, or what's interesting and what isn't, is presently proofing my work.

In between all this writing, I sent out scores of email, surfed the Internet, and tried to run a business, while being a good dad. I write the novels, but I also have to create publicity, work on marketing campaigns, select certain advertising, and answer scads of email.

I found an industry contact in Hollywood who is looking over Tales of the Yellow Silk and I managed to ship 4 books to Iceland, where I hope one of the senior columnists for Iceland Review will read and review them. A local comic book store is handling the first 2 Dragon books and they're prominently displayed on the front counter. Little victories like these keep us going.

Oops, I forgot that I spent time on ebay looking for some out-of-print and obscure titles for research on Eagle Blue, my upcoming young adult novel on a famous Civil War eagle. I'm telling the story through the eyes of the bald eagle and his young handlers, so it's fun messing around with eagle facts. I'm not sure the "voice" I'm going to give the eagle yet, but he will definitely compare white men to native Americans, and birds, of course. I've got an outline finished, some characters fleshed out, and a few battle scenes already written. I've decided on the eagle's name given to him by his mother, his Indian name is historical, and Old Abe was the name given to him by Union troops. There's a lot written about the eagle once he joined the Union Army as a mascot, but not much before that fateful day. I fiddled around with describing how the eagle felt during a certain battle, as bullets whizzed past him, after the Confederate general told his men he would reward the first man, "who kills that damn bird!" After 2 hours of blasting away, they still missed. It seems the bird could hear the miniballs coming and just twisted his body, up and down, left and right, to avoid the hurtling metal. Very cool.

Anyway, it was very satisfying to get so much writing done, even if it was after midnight every night for the past 6 days.