Went the distance, now I'm back on my feet

Yeah, I've totally dropped the ball on my blogging, huh? I'm sorry, guys. I'm going to work at it, I promise. I have some fun ideas for topics, too.

Last month I talked about making a fresh start, and how I needed to increase my Lady Raven sales before I could make plans for the third book in the series. Well, that's still very much the case, but things have been getting better for us overall and I'm hopeful we'll see some movement there in the new year.

Keeping with the positive changes, I've started work on a new book, going back to urban fantasy with an all-new series set in my beloved New York. When you've just come through a rough patch and want to get things moving again, why not work with what you know best? I'll have some more details about that as I write, but suffice it to say it's about fears and dreams and transforming one's hardships into power.

I'm heading to Octocon this weekend, both as a guest and as a writer for Writing.ie. I'll be doing a report on the event afterwards, so if anyone wants to share their thoughts, come and find me. You can find my panel timetable here.

What else is there? Oh yes, I mentioned new blog topic ideas. I used to write analyses of movies where I broke them down into the Hero's Journey, and while I really enjoyed them, there's a limited about you can do laying a single literary device over different stories. So I'm going to go further with that, and start a series of articles where I explain the writing lessons we can learn from movies. Movies, particularly ones aimed at younger audiences, need to be easily accessible and keep the audience engaged. They are a wonderful source of inspiration and examples of storytelling techniques. I'm aiming to get my first one up next week. I just need to come up with a name for them. I'm thinking "Writing Lessons From..." or "Let's Watch and Learn..." Any preferences?

And since one of my panels at Octocon is specifically about magic and how the interpretation of it intersects across fiction, games, and pagan beliefs, I figure the time is right to be a little more open about my spirituality. I won't be preaching, don't worry (I hate being preached at, myself), and any such article will be clearly marked so if anyone has no interest in spirituality, or finds it uncomfortable to discuss, can avoid them.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm back. I'm back writing. Back blogging. Back in the world. Back being happy.

Let's do this.