New Stuff

I haven't been terribly preoccupied with the Dark InSpectre site that's been in stasis cuz I've been working on a new short story. In between horrific migraine headaches this weekend, I finished it. I'm pretty psyched about it, it's been in my head for several years and I finally had time to write it. What's cool about it is that it's actually under 5,000 words, a rarity for me. So it's all printed out and ready for my wife to read, but after that, then what? My SOP used to be to post stuff over at the Baen's slush pile. My stories have always benefited from the feedback there, and I'm inclined to use it again. I checked it out yesterday and even though the Baen's Universe magazine has closed, the slush pile is still going strong. Funny, even after several years of getting stories published here and there and a semi-successful web series, I still got nervous at the prospect of posting a new story for critique. I guess that never goes away.

Anyway, the story is called Carousel, and it's about, you guessed it, a carousel. Hopefully it'll see the light of day later this year. Wish me luck!

Bloggin' Stuff

Once again I have posted my rapturous ramblings over at Abandoned Towers Magazine. Feel free to be enlightened by the virtuosity of my words. Just visit here!

In other news, I have successfully loaded all the old episodes of the Dark InSpectre on the new site, so yay! However, I'm having real trouble loading the audio episodes. For one, there's a 7 mb size limit on loading media, and some of the audio files are larger than that. And when I experimented with a smaller file, it seemed to load, but it won't show in the podpress player that's been installed.

I definitely need my editor to help with this, but she is in absentia again, which is becoming frustrating. Especially since she has yet to download the wordpress theme and banner graphic so the site actually looks like The Dark InSpectre and not just some generic wordpress site. Oh, and she has the next 4 episodes and the revised manuscript I sent her.

I guess I'll keep writing that short story I'm halfway through. : \

Loading, Loading, Loading

The bare-bones Dark InSpectre site is back up. The the new theme and banner graphic have not been downloaded yet (still waiting for my editor to do that), but it's functional and I've started fooling around with it, installing some widgets, etc. I've also started uploading all the original episodes. I'm about halfway done. Hopefully my editor can find some time to add her own touches to the site and I can send out that long-awaited email welcoming everybody back. I think I'll post a double new episode for everybody along with a thanks for being so patient. There are still lots of little details to work out with the site, how to moderate comments, how to upload the audio episodes. But it's all finally happening. So yay!

In other news, I just happened to run across my story from that Pirates and Swashbucklers anthology on the publisher's website being offered for free as an enticement to buy the anthology. So if you want to read it for free, check it out here. And if you like it, buy the whole book, all the stories are really good, I swear!

And speaking of that anthology, the editor just emailed me to verify my PayPal account. It seems like I'm actually going to get paid for it, woohoo! Of course, it's all PayPal money, which I regard as monopoly money, but still pretty cool, right?

AND I'm about halfway through a new short story I've had in my head for a long time. So double yay! I definitely seem to have emerged from the morose stasis field I was caught in when it came to my various writing endeavors. Thank god, it was getting depressing for a while there. But things seem to be picking up at last!

She's Back!

Hooray! A day before I was planning on e-mailing my editor to see WTF'sU, she e-mails me! Turns out she's had the flu and so been totally out of commission. But she's back now and ready to roll. So she's going to finish fixing up the new version of the Dark InSpectre site, and I just sent her the next four episodes to edit. So yay! I'll still have to re-load all 58 of the old episodes, so boo! But at least things are moving ahead. I also wrote the next monthly blog column for the Abandoned Towers site, so that's out of the way, too. Looks like things are back on track, which is good. I can't tell you the various grim scenarios that were going through my mind on what had happened. The most likely one was the tried and true kidnapped by mutants scenario. Thank god they are all just figments of my tortured paranoia. Hopefully we'll all be seeing Jack Garrett back on the web in a couple weeks. :)

Back from the Break

For the holiday break, I took the fam down to Rockville, Md. to stay with my folks. We just got back yesterday after five full days of family fun. It was a good trip, and I actually was able to revise a short story that had been nagging at me so that it's now ready to be re-subbed. It was a pretty substantial overhaul, so I'm pretty happy I was able to get it all done while on break. Still no word from my editor on anything. A facebook friend of mine actually asked me what's happening with the Dark InSpectre, so people are, in fact, conscious of it's absence. I'm going to have to send my editor a concerned email soon asking her what the hell's up. Oh, happy new year's!