Progress

It’s good to be back! Back online here, back to writing, back to publishing. Today I’m going to the home of a friend with all the material I’ve put together for a chapbook of short short stories by author Edward Bryant. Ed was a science fiction and horror writer who won many awards including two Nebula Awards. He wrote review articles for Locus magazine and covered conventions. Ed was extremely social and had many friends. Everyone knew him. But since his death, his fiction has not been as readily available. My goal is to get him back into print and hopefully keep him there. If we are successful today, this chapbook, tentatively titled Voices From the Cryptic Mind of Edward Bryant, will be available soon. I will post the news here, on Twitter and Facebook.

On a personal front, I’m still recovering but recovering quickly from my back surgery. I’m doing light housework and gardening. I plan to return to my day job at the hospital after Labor Day and am on track for that. I probably need to be doing more physical therapy, which will continue even after going back to work.

I finished Chapter Fourteen on my Lincoln book last night. I will read this at the Scribes meeting next week. I am starting Chapter Fifteen today with luck. Still trying for a goal of a scene a day. Chapter Fifteen consists of five scenes. I believe I posted earlier in the blog that I do work from an outline. I don’t stick rigidly to it. Additional ideas and even characters will come to me and occasionally be inserted. For me, working with an outline enables me to work with the story as a whole. I had hoped to have this book finished and available by fall, but that won’t happen. I now believe it will be released in the spring.

However, I hope to produce a novella that is written and just needs minor editing yet this fall. The novella deals with Lincoln in a later time period than my current novel. I’m afraid I won’t be creating the series in chronological order. I write the stories that interest me. The novella involves a famous Lincoln case that has been put into movies as well. I hope you will enjoy it. It is fun to rethink Lincoln and match his personality to the events of the time in each story.

Chapter Fifteen finds Lincoln in Alton, Illinois, talking to witnesses of the crime. Well, I’d better close here and get back to work.