Dawning Sky – An Artist's Site

With October starting up and another cycle of projects in the mix, I figured it was time for an update of sorts with respect to creative projects and academia. If anything, it keeps me honest and provides a point of reference for people who wonder if I really am *that* busy (and why I can’t be recording a specific season of a specific podcast in my spare time).

So, what’s going on in the grand world of V these days?

Audiobook Projects
The past three months have been lucrative for me in terms of audiobook contracts. I am finishing up the audiobook for Justin Macumber’s horror novel Still Water, with the plan to have it to ACX by the end of the week. By the end of October, I will wrap recording and production on Terry Mixon’s space opera novel Empire of Bones. After that, there is another audiobook (a contract that I haven’t officially accepted, but it’s a sequel to one of the best selling titles I have already recorded) which will take me through to December. At that point, I will go dark to focus completely on my comprehensive exams, which will require all of my attention and energy. After January, I will resurface to take on the next audiobook that is already in the queue.

The abbreviated version of this explanation is that I have work through the end of the year for audiobooks, and that my audiobook work is picking up. It continues to be paid work where I am bringing in a check on a monthly basis, and I want to support that habit.

Comprehensive Exams
Let’s face it, I’m not studying as much as I would like. I would like to be studying and going over notes for a few hours each day; right now, that’s not happening due to multiple commitments and priorities. I get in a half-hour, maybe an hour tops, about four days out of the week typing up notes that I’ve previously handwritten. My Scrivener file for all of my notes is becoming a richer document with article summaries and links to definitions, but I need to put in more time, either at the dayjob or at home. Through the next month, I hope to get more time on the weekends when I can escape to a quiet corner and study more effectively. I’m still working on a consistent schedule during the hours of the dayjob when I can review my notes, but I confess to being easily distracted when I’m not busy all the time. It’s a discipline thing, and something for me to work on and improve over the next thirty-one days.

Podcast Projects
At the moment, I’m not sure when I will begin recording the next season of SWC. I would like it to be sooner rather than later, but I would also like to have enough episodes recorded to maintain a steady release schedule. Considering current recording commitments, that could happen this month and next, with releases in December, but I don’t want to promise anything. Some posts in the Facebook group make me uneasy about promising any kind of release… but then I think that I should be grateful that folks are still listening and just work in a chapter here and there.

Writing
Still doing it, a little bit every day. Magic Spreadsheet chain is still unbroken at 613. Writing happens every day, and recording happens more days than not. I’m still revising the Outer Colonies story for Sam Riley and working to bring it to a close. The SWC crew is having their brainstorming sessions on a weekly basis so we can get the last book moving and bring our intrepid heroes’ journeys to some kind of grand finale. My brain refuses to leave other ideas alone, a sure sign that I have too many irons in the fire that I could put a blacksmith to shame.

Dayjob
Still teaching. Still going through the everyday of higher education, but it’s at a point in the semester when things are more automated. I’m losing faith in the abilities of one of my classes (there was a 60% submission rate for the first exam) and I had to revise the syllabus. The immediate office atmosphere is strange, and I can’t figure out why. There are days when I know the only reason I’m in my office is because I’m supposed to have my butt in my chair, but the work that I’m doing could be done from anywhere so long as I have a computer and a connection to the Internet. It’s a little weird, but… well, considering the list of the other things going on, it’s not a pressing concern.

There’s my world these days… alongside kids and spouse, of course. I find myself helping more and more with homework, spending more time planning and making meals, setting aside a bit of time exclusively for exercise, and getting comfortable with taking an hour in the evening to decompress before bed as a means to nurture my mental health. Crochet is wonderful for that.