On Marcus, Cystic Fibrosis, and Trying to Plan for the Future

So my son was born on Tuesday! Marcus is officially in the world and our family is one person richer. He also likely has cystic fibrosis.



Our current motto

The reason we think that he does is because earlier on in the pregnancy, my wife and I received genetic testing that indicated that both of us carried a gene that leads to the condition. We hadn't had that testing done when Sera was born, so it was a complete surprise to us. Neither of us knows of any cystic fibrosis tendencies in either of our families, but the disease is fairly rare, so I guess that is not surprising.

Cystic fibrosis is basically the unfortunate result of evolution screwing things up in classic style. The genes associated with the disease control a particular protein that is associated with mucus and secretions. Most of the mutations involved make it so that protein just doesn't get made or doesn't get put in the right place. That leads to abnormal mucus development throughout the body, including the lungs, intestinal tract, and reproductive system.


That development results in increased amounts of respiratory infections due to pools of mucus gathering in the lungs, malnutrition since the mucus near the pancreas keep enzymes from helping in digestion, GI blockages due to extra-thick mucus in the intestines and infertility due to blocked channels in the reproductive system. It used to result in frequent deaths in childhood due to these combined problems, but these days they have managed to mitigate a lot of the damage due to early treatment and effective options in terms of transplants, enzyme injections, and respiratory therapy. As a genetic disease, though, it isn't curable. At least, not unless somebody manages to design an effective retrovirus-based gene therapy to counteract the nonfunctional genes.

Marcus ended up having a GI blockage right off the bat, which meant that within twenty four hours of being born, he went through surgery. He's doing very well and is a strong, healthy little guy with a huge chin and a scowl to brag about, but recovery time from the surgery is going to be about eight weeks. The surgery didn't entirely solve the situation, because the bowl had actually been perforated due to the extra sticky crud in his intestinal tract. That meant the doctors had to more or less install a couple of tubes in his stomach to allow them to rehabilitate his lower bowels so that when he's recovered, they can reattach his stomach and upper intestinal tract to his lower intestines again. After that, it's hopefully just another eight weeks in the NICU and then he can come home.

So obviously things have been a little difficult lately. My bosses at work have been extremely understanding, and coworkers, friends, and family have all been extremely supportive. We're still kind of trying to figure out how to balance our lives over the next sixteen weeks; the hospital where Marcus is staying is about an hour and a half away, so seeing him, taking care of Sera, and continuing to work/go to graduate school/write is going to be an interesting challenge. It's tempting to pretty much attempt to live at the hospital, but my wife needs to recuperate from giving birth (the little guy went from water breaking to delivery in two hours, which is absolutely crazy) and life kind of needs to go on despite the drama. In the long term, it's going to be a question of how to figure out a pattern of life that allows me to be a part of my son's life while trying to secure our future as a family at the same time. I doubt it will be easy, but we will just need to get through it.

To everyone who has already expressed their support, we appreciate everything you are doing for us. It might get a little frustrating, because at the moment we are mostly just playing a waiting game. We won't know a lot of details about how fast recovery will be until a little time has gone by--in fact, the tests coming back confirming CF as a diagnosis aren't official yet, we're just basing it off the genetics and the type of GI block he experienced, which is typical of CF--and a lot of what we are doing right now is just trying to be there for the little guy. Your prayers and well-wishing is very much appreciated, and even if we might be a little reclusive, we really are grateful for everything you've said and done. It is just taking us a little while to process things emotionally, and since emotions are not really my strong suit, I hope that you'll be patient with me.

In terms of writing, my schedule's been kind of up in the air since Tuesday. I'm not sure if my previous plans for writing in 2014 are going to work out, but we will see. Eagle and Broken Halo are both still going to be published this year, however. The only thing we are waiting on is cover art for Eagle to be completed, and the artist we are working with on that is already doing a great job. I think I can be confident in saying that both will be up soon.

In any case, I hope that everyone is doing well out there. See you around!

On 2014 Publication Plans

Well, as we're finishing up preparations to publish Eagle and Broken Halo this year, I guess it is time to try and predict what we will be able to get done next year. It isn't the easiest thing to try and predict how much work will get done in a year, especially when things like a new baby, job changes and other things are on the horizon. That's kind of what got me into trouble with my predictions last year. A bunch of things cropped up partway through the year that I hadn't counted on when I planned to do four books in a year again, and as a result I'm only managing to get half of those books published before the year's end.

So as a result I think I will be a bit more conservative with what I will plan on doing. Hopefully that will lead to better estimates and more consistent work rather than the less productive schedule I tried to force myself to keep in 2013.

Looking at what I have ready so far, and about what shape it's in, I think that the following is going to be my goal. Glasswitch is still on my production list, and has actually reached a pretty good state. A couple more revisions and I believe it will be ready for 2014. So we'll put that one on the schedule at least.

Another novel I want to publish is the sequel to Broken Halo, called Shattered Wings. I figure that I should get something sci fi out next year, and I think that after Eagle I might need to give the universe of Jacob Hull a short rest, if only to make sure that I have developed enough as a writer to do the series justice. Since Shattered Wings would be a bit shorter, I think it is a much more reasonable target to hit within a year, though it would probably be closer towards the end of the year.

Those are probably the two full-length stories I'll do, but I would also like to try a bit of an experiment next year. I would like to start up some novels in serial fashion, since that would allow me to more consistently get material out, and I think that some of the stuff I've been working on will fit that pattern. One is a fantasy novel that I am writing in segments, tentatively titled Gerrod of Northwood. I think I will be able to get two of them out next year. The other is a cyberpunk novel I am currently extensively rewriting, The Social Contract. I think I'll only get one or two sections of that one out next year. Both would be a bit cheaper and shorter than my usual stuff, but again I would be able to get them out more consistently than I have been. Hopefully that would catch people's interest a bit more? We'll have to see.

In any case, thanks to everyone for staying with me on this journey. It's been an incredible experience to develop my skills as a writer, and I hope that I will be able to continue to work on these projects in the coming year. See you around!

On Plans for the Rest of the Year

So hey! It has been a while.

I have been rather caught up in a number of different things. Returning to school to gain new, hopefully-employable skills has been one of those things. Getting ready for the birth of our second child is another. Then there's been the rampant lack of blogging skill and motivation that has always kind of hampered my posts here. Sorry about that by the way, I will try harder in the future to keep this place up to date rather than covered in cobwebs.

Fortunately that is not all I have been up to.

Broken Halo is ninety percent done or so, and we already have the cover ready! So that should be one book that is going to come out this year rather than the next. Check out the cover by James Curwen! We definitely lucked out getting his help with the artwork this time around again.

Eagle is a little less ready. I'm about halfway to two thirds done with the second to last revision. The copy edit should be off to the editor by the end of the week, so from there it shouldn't take too long to fix up. It may be something of a rush to get it done by the end of the year, but I think we can make it happen still.

Glasswitch and Social Contract are both going to be delayed until next year. There has just been too much going on between all of the various crises to get the editing done for those novels, especially since Contract needs a major rewrite thanks to current events. Grg. That is rather frustrating, but I suppose you have to roll with the punches, right?

So there's kind of the state of the Kindal Debenham writing world. I should be able to hammer out a tentative publishing schedule for next year, which my hope is will be a bit more realistic and achievable than last year's goals. At the very least I shouldn't plan on releasing four novels in one year; that was a bit out of my reach. Lessons learned, I suppose, and then we move on.

Anyway, hope you guys are all doing alright, and I will see you around!

On A Quick Snapshot of Life

I'm not dead yet! Yeah!

So, I'm terrible at blogging. I think that's probably an obvious thing to most people by now, but I might as well get that out there. It's probably the same kind of fault I have in terms of writing a journal, only here the failure is quite a bit more public. Ah, well...

In any case, here are some of the things that have been keeping this writer/husband/father/etc busy over the past few weeks. I might revisit some of these things later just to give them a bit of depth, but I might as well give some kind of an overview, right?

First up, with the collaboration of a wonderful translator by the name of Michael Drecker, we are going to have a German translation of Wolfhound up in a couple of weeks. There is a free sample up for the rest of this week, with the first eight chapters or so available. It's been an interesting experiment in foreign publishing for me, so I hope that it will turn out well. Here goes nothing!

Second, progress has continued on the third Jacob Hull book, Eagle. It has not gone as quickly as I might have liked, but I think that the book really will turn out better thanks to the changes I am making. It had a few pacing issues that needed to be worked out, which seems to be an intensely difficult revision to make. Unfortunately, that means that I likely won't make my August deadline for publishing it, but that's the way life goes sometimes. At the very least I will be publishing something I am confident in, which counts for more than punctuality in this case.

Third, I'm going to have to do a major rewrite of The Social Contract before it sees the light of day. Recent events have taken some of the villainous aspects of the bad guys in the book out of fiction and into reality, so that makes the whole premise a little less workable. It's scary when a piece of your cyberpunk dystopia novel becomes obsolete, not because of advances in technology or societal changes, but because it's already a part of our daily lives. Whatever else you might think of the PRISM thing, it has certainly made the lives of sci fi writers much harder, which I think we can all agree is the important thing here!

Fourth, I'm going to start taking graduate courses in computer science, beginning in the fall. No, it's not related to the previous topic, it's more just a gradual career shift required by our current situation. Any suggestions, heckling, stories, or advice would be appreciated. My main concern is that my cheapo, three year old laptop isn't going to be up to snuff, but I may just replace it before we start. I've been noticing some major problems with this one, and it may just be time to get something new.

Fifth, because I like to bury the lead, we're having another kid! My wife is yet again expecting, and we're both really happy about it. It is going to be a bit scary, since child number one is kind of active and challenging at times, but it will be kind of cool to see how our family grows. Unfortunately, this may be the time where I have to admit that I am an adult now. Sad, but probably true.

So there you have it, life as it is right now for me. The next few weeks...well, maybe the next few years are going to be interesting, so we shall see how I get through it. Thanks for all your support out there guys, and I hope your life goes as well or better than mine. See you around!

Progress Update

So just a quick note this week on how things are going. Not much else was going on this week, so it's a boring post. Sorry.

Broken Halo's out to alpha readers, who I hope will enjoy it. My writing time is currently being divided between the first draft of Eagle and the next draft of Glasswitch. Eagle is going rather well at the moment; we're about thirty six thousand words into the story, which by my estimate says we're at the one-third point. At the rate I am writing, I should be finished with the first draft in about four more weeks--again, if nothing horribly unexpected happens. Glasswitch is going rather well too--the edits I'm coming up with are definitely going to improve the story, and the pace is about what I'd hoped for. It's a smaller novel, so I'm hoping to finish this draft by the beginning of February, and then move on to the second draft of Social Contract. After Eagle, I'll do a first draft of Airships over London, the next book in the Kingsley series.

That's the schedule for the beginning of 2014! It should be interesting to see if I can keep this pace up. Missing quite a bit of sleep, but that should just improve my writing, right? At least, that's what the sleep-deprivation-hallucinations tell me. They wouldn't lie, would they?

In any case, we are on track to do quite a bit this year, and I would say that we are off to a good start. hope everyone is doing all right out there, and I'll see you around.

On Kingsley's New Cover

So we officially have a cover for the next Hector Kingsley book! Here it is. It has once again been provided through the skill of Mr. Robert Ennis, who has once again outdone himself. The book is now off to the copy editor, and I am hoping to have the thing ready before the end of the year. Here's hoping nothing drastically terrible happens, right? Aheh.

Heh. Yeah... Seriously, it would be nice if that didn't happen.









In any case, the other news is that Kingsley's first novel is now on sale. I think that I will leave the price this low through December and January, in the hopes that it will get people excited about the sequel. If you haven't bought it yet, go ahead and try it now! I think it's a really good story, though I suppose I am a bit biased.

Anyway, hope all is going well for everyone, and I'll see you around!

On Another One Down

So, yeah, I haven't been posting here, mostly because I've been a bit occupied. Broken Halo's first draft has more or less consumed my free time and thinking space since I finished publishing Badger and Iron Angels mid-August. It is a good sign that the story kind of caught me up like that, or at least I hope it is. In any case, I managed to write like a maniac the past few weeks and put the finishing touches on the rough draft last Friday. On a related note, I think I've actually crossed the magic one million words of rough drafts mark that is supposed to mean I won't suck anymore. So for everyone who has been enjoying (or by the reviews, not enjoying) my work, don't worry. It will get better. :)

Anyway, finishing Broken Halo means I'm able to shift my focus to other projects now. First up on the list is going to be Hector Kingsley: Murders in Whitechapel. The book has been sitting on the backburner for a while, mainly due to my preoccupation with other projects, but I think that now that I've more or less overdosed on space operas for four months, some steampunk is in order. Fortunately, I've been cooking up quite a few interesting ideas for our stuffy, erudite investigator, and I think the upcoming draft will provide a much better story than I had before. My goal is to pretty much rip through the revisions in about three weeks--a pace which kind of intimidates me when I think too much about it, but it feels right. Here's hoping I don't screw everything up!

Eagle is going to need a bit more pondering before I'm really ready to start into it. I'm hesitant to get really in depth on it now, both because of the risk of burning myself out, and because I am worried about getting obsessed with it like I did with Broken Halo. I need to revise stuff sometime, and that means I will just poke along for a bit with the rough draft until I can turn my full attention to it.

Other than that, my progress seems to be going fairly well. Books are selling, I'm somewhat less close to utter and complete madness, and I think I am doing alright. Thanks for your patience with my little update here; I will try to get a few more posts up if I get the chance. In any case, I will see you all later!

On What Happens Next

Well, four books are up! That is good...

Soooo, now what?

My focus on getting Iron Angels and Badger done has kind of consumed my attention for the past few months. I've literally spent every spare hour that I could on those projects, but that has left the ground in several other areas a little bare. My blog is, shall we say, a bit out of date and shabby, I've done little in the way of promotion, and my other books have been a bit neglected. Now I finally have the time and energy to devote to them, but I'm faced with the need to choose which one!

So in terms of my main writing goals, I think that Murders is my next revision target. That book was originally supposed to come out near the end of 2012 and cap my efforts for the year. Even though Hector Kingsley has not been my most popular work, I think that I will at the very least finish up this sequel. Besides, while explosions are nice, I think I need a short break for a while so that I don't burn the action side of my brain out.

New projects will include Broken Halo (Iron Angels' sequel) and Eagle (next book in the Jacob Hull series). I'll be poking along with those while I get their stories set up, and hopefully will finish both rough drafts before the end of the year. That should give me plenty of time to get both books out during 2013.

Of course, there's always the side projects. My blog needs to be reorganized and such. Maybe there should be time set aside for that on Saturdays? I don't know. Bah. Too much to do and not enough time... See you around!

On Early Mornings and Productivity

I've recently made a change in my morning routine. Said change involves me getting up at five thirty in an attempt to get some writing done before the chaos of my day comes crashing in.

So far, my little experiment has been a resounding success. I've gotten an astonishing amount done in the past few weeks, even with the intrusion of a chaotic vacation and a few other difficulties. At the same time, I've been sleeping a little better, and I've felt like there has been a remarkably positive change in my mood. Crazy what a little advice from Benjamin Franklin can do, huh?

As a result, the crushing amount of work I've been facing has declined to somewhat managable levels. Both books look like they are going to come out more or less as planned, and I've even been able to head off some interesting problems before they've started. New intro material is ready to go into the back parts of my books, setting up a schedule for Eagle (Jacob Hull's next book) and Broken Halo (Iron Angel's sequel), as well as Murders in Whitechapel. I'm still debating on the schedule for some of the projects for 2013, but that's probably for another post. As things stand, I'll just be happy to finish 2012 with two Hector Kingsley novels, two Jacob Hull novels, and one Iron Angels book out, and it is looking like I'll actually be able to pull that off.

That is, if five thirty doesn't kill me first. Seriously, it's productive, but just seeing that number hurts...

On Badger

So as I'm finishing up the rewrite of Badger this week, I thought I would give you guys a preview of the cover for it. It was once again drawn by Paul Hamblin, the artist who drew the cover for Wolfhound. He tells me it is just about done, just a few small tweaks and we are ready to go. That puts us on a pretty good schedule, since the plan is now to release both Badger and Iron Angels on August 14th. Now if we could just get the book done as well... See you around!

On Schedule Changes

So I suppose it would be good for me to admit something at this point. Iron Angels won't be coming out in May.

That might be kind of obvious, given that we are on the last day of the month. Hope springs eternal, I guess. :) Unfortunately due to delays caused by our move to Pennsylvania, other projects, and the unavoidable craziness my life seems to attract, the possibility of getting the book out this month wasn't very high.

Which, of course, means I now have a decision to make. I can either continue to work on Iron Angels until it is in publishable condition and get it out during the month of June. That would mean putting off the revisions on Badger until Iron Angels is completely done, possibly delaying that book as well, which is something that might get me mobbed. :) Alternatively, I can shift my focus to work on Badger and finish up the work on Iron Angels at a later point. One way will minimize the delay before Iron Angels hits the market, while the other preserves the rest of my schedule for Badger and the other books.

As I've been thinking about it, though, the best option seems to be the second one. Iron Angels is in the final stages; that means it will only need a short, final revision to touch things up before it is ready to go. I think that if I get Badger ready during June, send it to the copy editor by the end of the month, and turn my attention to Iron Angels after that, I can have Iron Angels ready before I get Badger back at the end of July. Then I can pour my efforts into getting Badger ready, which I will hope to get out by the middle of August. That way, instead of stressing myself to my limits and possibly rushing the development of these two stories, I can take each at its own pace, and probably have both of them ready by mid-August. They'll be released at the same time so that they can support each other, which might be a benefit that I won't complain too much about.

There are benefits to doing things the other way as well, but I think they are more than outweighed by the costs in time, effort, and most importantly, sanity. Putting too much pressure on myself to get everything done at a preset time, without consideration for the usual chaos that infects my life, will do more harm than good in the long run. By taking a more measured approach, I can have both books out before the end of the year, and hopefully arrive at my next project with my wits intact.

So yeah, if you are waiting for Iron Angels to come out right now, I apologize for the let down. It has taken me a while to admit it, but it turns out I am human too, and can fail. Blergh. Rest assured, however, that my schedule for Badger remains unchanged. My rewrites on that are starting as we speak, and the alpha readers have pretty much all gotten back to me. That project has me both excited, scared half to death and ready to start. Let's hope no more crazy hops in the way this time.

In any case, I'll see you around!

On A New Schedule

It's different when you get home in the late afternoon.

I knew that already, intellectually at least. I had braced myself successfully for the tiredness in the morning, at least initially. During high school I was a bit of a morning person, so I kind of hoped that I could recover and start to push back against my own weariness sooner rather than later. The work has been more or less what I expected.

What I hadn't anticipated was the wholesale shift in my schedule after work. It has been a bit difficult to adjust to having hours of free time available and still being able to get a good night's sleep. For some reason, that's thrown me off a little bit, but hopefully my befuddled state will wear off soon.

In any case, I am still plugging away on Social Contract, and my work on Badger's partial rewrite has gone well. I just need to get back in the swing of things, and I think things will go entirely well. Here's hoping I'm not overly optimistic about that; then again, optimism is something I have only rarely been accused of. :) See you around!

On Revisions and New Stories

So I've started on the revision schedule that I had planned for February. The fact that I'm moving in less than two weeks has kind of complicated things, but not too badly. The plan is to do a quick readthrough of Badger, mainly to remove characters that shouldn't be in some of the scenes, refine some of the relationships, and organize the whole book a bit better. That part of the effort has gone well so far, and I am happy to say that I think I will finish that pretty soon.

Revision plan number two is to move on to Murders once Badger is done. Murders needs a pretty similar treatment, with a few more detailed revisions to iron out some of the inconsistencies. My hope is to finish that by the end of the month so that I can dive into a revision of Iron Angels after that.

As far as new stories, I've started Social Contract now in earnest. I guess a lot of my obstacles in that story had to do with what kind of a story the book was turning out to be. It's very hard to write a book that touches on societal conditions and politics without turning preachy, and the initial sections of the story seemed to be headed in that direction. After a few weeks of writer's block and a lot of pondering, I think I've got the direction of the story figured out, though, so hopefully I can dive right into the meat of things! My goal on that one is to have the first draft done by the end of March, so that I can start on Eagle, the third Jacob Hull book.

That's the plan for now, at least. I'm sure the move will require some...adaptations...but I remain confident that I can get all of this done on time. After that, it should be a pretty straight shot from here to the beginning of May, when Iron Angels will launch, and after that I just have Badger and Murders to get up in the summer and fall respectively. Meanwhile, I need to be working on the novels that will hopefully be ready to launch through 2013, namely Social Contract, Eagle, Airships Over London, and Iron Angels 2.

Sigh. When did the hours of the day get to be so few...

On Bleh

You never realize exactly how much you are on the internet until your modem dies and you suddenly don't have the internet to be on. :(

Fortunately we were able to fix that problem fairly quickly, which is why I once again have a steady, glorious connection to the interwebs. All the better to obsessively check on Amazon with.

Speaking of which, we got another review! And it was another good one! Sales for Wolfhound are still going fairly well; I've been impressed with how the book is doing, and I've come to the conclusion that December and January are golden times for a new book. If things keep going like this, then Wolfhound will have paid itself back easily. That sort of early success definitely does wonders for my self confidence.

Of course, now the more neurotic half of my brain is chipping away at that confidence by making me worry that I will let these people down with my next book. All of a sudden I have expectations to live up to, and that was an unexpected burst of stress to deal with. At least Iron Angels is now out, Social Contract has been started (Mwahahaha!) and I have a few days to pound away at Edawku before I dig into the Hector Kingsley copy edit. No pressure though. Right?

Right?

On Another Draft Done

So as of yesterday, the first draft of Murders in Whitechapel has been finished. The overall story still needs a bit of work, but I think that people who like the first book will enjoy this one as well. I certainly enjoyed writing it; now I just need to get to work on the revisions on it.

In other news, I now get to work on The Social Contract! That book will probably occupy me for the first few months of 2012, and I am so excited about it. The various elements of the story are going to be pretty cool, and it will be a very different kind of story. At the same time I'm going to be revising a book for a friend called Edawkuh, (Yes, I will get to it, Megan) and hopefully finishing up an alpha rewrite of Iron Angels before the week is up. So yeah, even on break I still plan to be pretty busy. :)

In any case, the completion of the last book of the year calls for a celebration of sorts, so I'm going to give you guys the back cover of the paperback/hardcover version of The True Adventures of Hector Kingsley, courtesy of Mr. Ennis once again. See you around, and happy holidays!

On Setting New Goals (aka Scheduling Crazy Stuff)

So Murders in Whitechapel (or Mysteries in Whitechapel as I think it will probably be called), has been progressing pretty well. I am about seven thousand words in, and the story is shaping up pretty well.

My attempt to rewrite Iron Angels fell a little flat, however. Instead, I decided to turn Badger into a readable copy first, while I am still interested in Jacob's story. Once I get to that point, I will return to Gabriel and Susan and hopefully get an alpha reader copy out by mid October. After that, I will do another revision of Adventures and probably send out queries and summaries to editors and agents by the beginning of November. That will get me ready to finish off Mysteries by mid-November, and hopefully get Wolfhound published on Amazon and Smashwords by late November/early December, thus completing my journey towards having something up by Christmas.

On a totally unrealted note, I'm feeling kind of tired lately. Any ideas why? :) See you around!