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 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 Tweets and Meets

So we're back from the LDS Storymakers conference! It was an awesome experience. We got to meet a lot of people (including Ailsa from our writing group! and Aneeka, also occasionally from our writing group!) and listen to a lot of incredibly interesting lectures on writing. The entire thing took pretty much two whole days, so I will try to distill some of the best parts into a five highlight list.

1. Yes, Howard Tayler, I will work very, very hard. Enough said.

2. Sandra Tayler managed to make finances both scary enough to pay attention to and managable enough that I am not totally panicking. Not bad for someone with a Humanities major.

3. Per David Wolverton, sci fi is about a sense of wonder. I should make an extra effort at including that. Heh heh heh...

4. No matter how well your day went at a writing conference, it will always still suck to come home to water leakage and fans trying to dry out your carpet.

5. I won a door prize! It included a discount for a content edit through Eschler Editing. Now what would I use that for... :) Mwahahahaha!

So those are some of the highlights. It was a lot of fun! I will probably write more about the whole thing later. Just giving a quick update.

Speaking of quick updates, I am now on Twitter. Not sure how I like it yet, but we will see what pithy remarks I can make to win the respect and admiration of the entire world, 140 characters at a time. Shouldn't be hard, right? Muttter, mutter, mutter...

On Cool Stuff and Getting Stuff Done

Alright, so first things first. Iron Angels second to last draft is finally done. Yeah! Now it is off to our esteemed copy editor, Tristi Pinkston. Hopefully that means we will be on track for a publication date in May, which at the moment looks increasingly likely.

That also means that I am now free to work on other projects again, namely The Social Contract's first draft and the Badger rewrite. I will hopefully have the alpha readers go over Badger during May, so that I can then spend most of June tearing it apart. Let me know if you want to help out with the whole process! As it is, Badger has a target publication month of August, and I think we have a very good chance of making that date too. After that, the only other book to get done during 2012 will be the sequel for Kingsley, subtitled Murders in Whitechapel, which hopefully will be ready by November.

Five books in less than a year. That's possible and not entirely crazy, right? Aheh heh...

On to other things. We have a cover being done for Badger at the moment, again by Paul Hamblin, our awesome artist from Wolfhound. He's sent me a few rough versions, and says he'll have the finished prodcut done soon. I'll post it when it's ready, so get excited for it!

We've also had an ad up occasionally on Girl Genius, and things have been going moderately well for us. I don't know how cost effective ads are for ebooks; perhaps it is the fact that we need people to buy the book and not just visit a comic? At the same time, Kingsley's been doing a bit better as a result, so I'm not complaining at all!

Also, at the end of this next week, Emily and I will be off to Utah to participate in the LDS Storymakers conference. It will be the first time going as an actual professional writer, so I'm kind of nervous. At the same time, we'll get to meet some of our writing friends and attend some cool panels and workshops, so it is totally worth it!

Finally, whoever did this is awesome, hands down. I'm on a freaking wiki! Huzzah!

Whew, lots of news, huh? Perhaps I should post here more often... oh well. Off to work! See you around!

On the End of 2011

Well, somehow we've made it all the way through 2011, and man has it been an interesting year. As seems to be traditional, I will spend this last post of December as a way to run through some of the major events and accomplishments that marked my life this year and express gratitude for the opportunity to have them. None of these things came free, but they are each definitely worth it.

First among them was the birth of my first daughter, Sera. She has been a wonderful blessing to my life, and I have been able to get to know this wonderful little being as she has grown up. So far, she doesn't seem to mind me, which is always a plus; hopefully that continues in 2012!

Second, I managed to start a writing career! Wolfhound was published in December, and has already sold a fairly decent amount. Besides that, I've managed to write over 340k new words in four different novels. Now I have a revision schedule that says I will publish each of those four novels in 2012, while writing four more to follow them up. It has literally been a miracle for me to be able to pursue that dream, and I think I've done rather well getting four rough drafts written in a single year. The revising has gone pretty well too, and I have high hopes to be able to continue the process in the coming months. We shall see if my abilities meet my expectations of course, but so far I think we are doing pretty well.

Third, I finally outgifted my wife for Christmas! Mwahahaha! It took me about four years to put that accomplishment together, but I managed it. Okay, it's kind of a small victory, but I say that it was totally awesome, so there. :P We've also been able to keep the writing group going for over a year now, and I've officially been working full time at the emergency room for over a year as well. We've been able to move forward in a lot of ways, and that has me looking forward to what we can accomplish together in the future. Thanks to everyone for all of your help, support, and love, and I hope that you are all celebrating the accomplishments in your own life and looking forward to the dawn of a new year.

So there's the year in very, very brief terms. Here's hoping that after all the trials and obstacles, all the work and the struggle, we can keep moving forward in the coming year. Thanks again for all of your help, and I will see you in 2012!

August Update

Alright, here's the situation before I descend into the morass of writing that has consumed me lately.

You know that 3rd draft of Kingsley I was working on? It's done now, though I will still tinker with it. Thanks again to all of my alpha readers; your contributions were greatly appreciated. Next on my list is a query letter revision and a synopsis that I can send out to some traditional publishing agencies and companies. We'll give the regular market some time to take up the series before I go it alone with Kingsley.

Badger proceeds on schedule, despite constant interference from the opposing forces of over-motivation and procrastination. Distraction has made an occasional appearance as well, but we've broken the 50k mark as of last week, and I intend keeping the book on track for a Sept 10th first draft finish date. The story is going relatively well for a first draft, but I think I've grown to hate the clunkiness of my first pass at the stories I write. Compared to the much more improved version on the second run through, it just seems very much unfinished, which tires me a little. Oh well, such is the process of writing.

Iron Angels is still making its way through the writing group. I think I'll probably continue submitting sections until the first draft of Badger is done, and then revise a quick 3rd draft to prepare it for alpha readers. So far its going pretty well, so hopefully I didn't mess it up.

As for Wolfhound, we have cover art! Or at least, a sketch for it. It looks awesome, but I'm going to wait until it is more finished before I post it up for everyone. After all, I don't like people looking at my first drafts, so why would I do that to the artist? Just rest assured, its super cool! Also, with the 3rd draft of Kingsley done, I'll be switching to a quick 7th draft of Wolfhound in preperation for the copy edit.

In other news, Seraphina now has a neck, a hunger for rice cereal and a temper. Life is always getting more interesting... See ya!

On Late Updates

Woops. I tend to have these things set up ahead of time, so sorry if you checked in before I got this up.

In any case, just as an update on my progress, I am already a good part of the way through the beginning of Iron Angels. I was worried about starting it, because there is a religious figure as one of the major characters and it is hard to write one of those without getting preachy or didactic. So far, though, it seems to be going well.

Kingsley's second draft is going well, though a bit slower than I'd like. It is hard to think in both stories at once, and I can only hope that between the writing group comments and my own notes I can avoid losing track of things.

In terms of my other goals, we managed a temple trip and a social outing so far, as well as a first readthrough of Megan's book. Hopefully that's a good enough start to let me finish the rest of my targets for the month. Here's hoping for good luck! See you around!

Uhhh, On Consistency

Yeah... So, I'm back. I'm sure those who've read the blog are just now recovering from the fact that i have once again posted. Don't worry; I'm fairly confident the world is not yet ending.

Here's how life has gone recently. I had a wonderful opportunity to participate in some lab research. Unfortunately, I came to a conclusion as a result that research is not for me. I had kind of looked at it as a punch-the-clock, earn-a-living job, and it is more of a be-passionate-about-it-or-be-miserable job. That sort of set me on the search for yet another career, which given that I haven't been successful in my efforts so far, means I am kind of frustrated. My current thoughts turn towards biomedical engineering. It pays well, very favorably to research, though not as well as medicine, and has the potential to let me write on the side. I still need to research the career path a bit more, but at least I am looking at options.

Writing-wise, I have been working on two different projects. First off, I am revising Wolfhound in order to try and submit it to a manuscript contest. It involves a bit of a time crunch, but I work best when face with a deadline, so at the very least I can put the novel into its final revision. If it fails to do much in the contest, I have started to wonder if I should go the e-publishing route with it. My reasons are that most agents don't seem to be interested in new science fiction due to the low profit margins sci fi gives. Publishers in general don't seem all that excited about action adventure sci fi either, but I suppose I could send out queries to them first. At the very least, I would rather have the book out there and possibly earning money and readers rather than just ending up sitting on my computer at home.

I have a lot more hope for my newest project however. My working title is The True Adventures of Hector Kingsley. In short, it's a steampunk detective novel centered on the investgations of Hector Kingsley, an experienced detective working in a world changed by the discovery of an extraordinary crystal called the Distillation, which has warped both the people and technology of Victorian London almost beyond recognition. The freedom of writing a steampunk novel has been wonderful, and I have managed to create a character voice that seems to work very, very well. My wife says it's because I always write "flowery", though I would prefer poetic as a descriptor. Sounds a bit more masculine that way. :) I am plunking away at a first draft, and the writing group has been helping me improve it as I go, so I hope that when I finish it I can have another novel to shop around. The next post will probably be a letter from Kingsley's point of view, so let me know what you think of it.

As for the family, our little baby is developing right on schedule. She will be arriving soon, maybe in the next few weeks, and both my wife and I couldn't be more excited. We are kind of all done with the pregnancy and waiting thing; we would just like to have our little girl to love and hold. Expect some posts on the nervousness/insecurities of my future parenthood sometime soon.

In any case, we are doing alright, and life has continued on. I suppose that's the best I could expect, and in reality I have been blessed in a lot of different ways. I just hope that I can live up to the opportunities I have, and that I can find my path clear to me. Wish me luck; I have a sneaky suspicion that I will need it. See ya!

November Update

So, life has been interesting lately. Sorry I haven’t been good at chronicling everything here, but I think some things are clearer in perspective.
First off, I am still working at the ER. I have grown more used to the job, and I feel like I am not screwing it up so badly now that I kind of know the lay of the land. Still, it is not exactly how I want to spend my life, so I have been working on applying to grad schools. Applying is honestly hard, what with the abject failures in the past few years. I worry that my effort is just going to go down the tubes again, but I have to hope otherwise. Research had always been my ultimate goal in any case, and I have felt far more committed to and excited about that career path than I ever did when I considered medicine.
Speaking of exciting developments, our new member of the family continues to develop right on schedule. He or she is doing well, and so is his or her mother, though she is very impatient for the little tyke to arrive. Little does the kid know that there is going to be some sort of holy war over who gets to raise it the instant it leaves the womb. My sisters and the new grandparents are going to spoil it rotten, and that’s not even considering the extended family. Ugh.
On another note, the old Quark writing group is reborn! Mwahahaha! We are meeting on Saturdays through the use of Skype’s conference call function. I think it has turned out to be a pretty big success. We have plenty of people submitting, a lot of good stories, and a minimum of bickering. Considering it’s a group I formed, that minimum is probably the best you could ask for, right? :) In any case, if anybody out there reading wants to join, just send me an email and we would be glad to add you to the group. Fresh meat always bleeds more after all. Heh heh heh…
All in all, life is going better than it has in a while. I have a lot of people to thank for it, for their patience with me and their constant support. Now I just need to make sure that their confidence does not go to waste. No pressure though.
Hope all of you guys are still doing well, and I will see you around!

On Slacking Off

Yes, I'm still alive. I'll probably post an update a bit later on next week. Been busy with a few projects, working on a few things. Unfortunately, that has detracted from my work on this blog. Maybe I'll just go to one update a week; that could be easier to do.

In any case, sorry for the long sleep. Hope all is going well for you, and I will see you around.

Extra Update

So, one last piece of news that we’ve kind of been holding out on until recently. We’re going to be having a baby!

That’s right, there will soon be a mini version of me or my wife running around. We are about ten weeks along, and the due date is supposedly set around April first, which just happens to be around my father’s birthday.

Today was the first ultrasound, and we were able to see the little kid for the first time. Looks healthy enough, doctor said everything was fine and that the heart was beating good and strong. As we were watching, the little one gave us a little kick/wiggle as if to say hello, so you can already tell that they’ve inherited our lack of ability for staying still. So, yeah, new Debenham on the way, and life continues as it always has. Who would’ve thunk it, huh?

Hope all is going well for you guys, and I’ll see you around!

August Update

Alright, I apologize for the lack of other updates this week. A combination of internet outages, scheduling adjustments and plain simple ‘flojera’ prevented me from posting more frequently, but my hope is that in the coming week I can be more consistent.

One of the factors limiting my time to write is the sudden addition of an hour long commute to most of my days. Driving back and forth an hour to work has definitely impacted my ability to focus on writing, and it has started to wear on other aspects of my life as well. Still, the move was definitely worth it. My dear, patient wife has been enjoying her job a lot more now that she no longer has to deal with said commute, and I have a feeling that this year will be a great one for her.

As far as my own progress, I find myself somewhat lacking. As you might have guessed from a lack of ecstatic updates, I am not going to be attending med school this year. In some ways, that fact disappoints me. In others, it leaves me grateful, since my experiences with my current work and situation have made me doubt that med school would have been the best course for me. The schedule, emotional demands and other aspects of the medical career just don’t seem to be what I would have looked forward to each day.

However, at the same time, my life now lacks a solid direction to head towards. I’m financially secure and employed, which probably puts me ahead of the game compared to a lot of what people are already calling the ‘lost generation’ but I doubt I would be satisfied simply settling for what I have already. Writing has been harder, and I almost feel that as others of my friends have gotten offers from agents and publishers for their stories that I am falling behind there. Grad schools look inviting, but I am plagued by doubts that I am drifting in that direction for the same reason I did med school—simply because it sounds like a good idea and not because I really want that kind of career. It is incredibly frustrating, so tomorrow I may need to sit down with the spouse and actually make some solid goals for me to shoot towards in the long term. Grg.

In any case, that’s kind of my situation as of the end of August. This time I promise not to fade away for a full week before posting again. I hope all of you are doing well, and that your lives are happy. Be safe out there, and I’ll see you around.

On Expectations

You know, over the past few days, I’ve had several different expectations fall through for me. It’s been a disappointing week in a lot of ways. Medical school looks like a bust, Wolfhound will be harder to revise than I previously thought, and the future looks a lot less ideal and a lot more uncertain than I was hoping to find it in the final parts of July. As I was thinking over those events today, my thoughts sort of dovetailed with some other things I was pondering.

These days it seems like there are very few people who have real dreams for themselves. When you ask people what they want most, they respond with a cookie cutter picture out of the fifties. They just want a big house, maybe kids, and a lot of money maybe. There just doesn’t seem to be a lot of drive in society to find a dream and see it through. Lots of people seem to want to fit into a niche and settle there rather than setting high goals.

So even as a lot of my goals are falling through and I find myself discouraged by my failures, I can at least console myself with the fact that I had the will to try it. My expectations might have needed to be a bit more realistic, and the road might be difficult as I try to reach those goals, but at least I am still setting them and working towards them. One bright spot in a pit of crap, right? Hahaha.

And on that downer note, I’ll see you around, guys. Have a great week (at least, better than mine has been) and I’ll try to come up with something a bit more cheery for Saturday. See ya.

All Good Things Must Come to An End

So as of today, my laptop is on its last legs. Due to various circumstances, it has started to forget that it has a bootable hard drive when it starts up. Though I’m not a big computer guy, I can sort of tell that this is a bad sign for its future health. It may be time to replace it before I lose everything.

In other news, which I’m sure you’ll all enjoy, I’ve decided to figure out a way to post the Game stuff on the blog, but not in the body of the post. That way you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to, and I can start trying to put together a guide book of sorts.

Also, my body is very upset with me right now. I spent a lot of yesterday afternoon moving two families into our ward, and my scrawny, cross-country runner frame did not appreciate it. Grumble, grumble, grumble…

So, yeah, that’s how life is going. More of an update tomorrow I think. See ya round!

June Update

Alright, so we are back from the wedding. There was much fun had, and much sleep lost. Hopefully over the next week I’ll be able to catch back up on that, but my current work schedule makes that a doubtful proposition at best. In any case, I guess it is time for an update on my situation, in case anyone is curious as to what else I’ve been up to besides work, nerdy gaming posts, and family weddings.

First up, med school applications. I currently have four schools who could still potentially accept me, the same four that I have been hoping for since the beginning of May. Two of them have officially wait-listed me, which means that the spots they want to offer me are technically filled, but if anyone who is currently enrolled drops out, they would give me the slot. The other two still have me in the gray area where they have not said yes, no, or even the tentative maybe of a wait listing.

We had been hoping to get a response back by the end of May, but I guess the competition for these spots is particularly fierce this year, so we are going to be patient a bit longer. That is fine with me, though. The very fact that they have not rejected me yet implies that I must be near the top of their lists, and I would be certainly happy and grateful for the chance to go to any one of these schools. The anticipation is always a killer, though.

As for writing, I have been inching my way through Realm. This story is much longer than my others, and will need quite a bit of work, so it will be quite a while before I think it is readable. The fact that my newfound job has forced me to slow down the writing pace significantly has not helped. I am considering finishing the first draft, then turning my attention to either the next rewrite of Brellan, or maybe putting a quick series of finishing touches on Wolfhound so that I can start sending it out to agents again. I’ll probably make a decision on which of those two courses to take once I get closer to the end, which I hope will come around the end of June.

During the wedding I also ran into a couple of former players from the older version of the Game. I asked them what they liked about it, and what they hated. They told me they liked the fighting, the satisfaction of beating personal adversaries, and the chance to build up awesome bases and such. The only thing they didn’t like was having to get me to let them play. Figures that I was the one problem with the system, huh?

Everything else is going alright for now. My wife’s job just came to a close, and that means we’ll be able to see a bit more of each other, which is nice for me and annoying for her, I’m sure. We haven’t heard of any hurricanes moving towards Houston, which is also nice. So yeah, we’re just still plugging along here. Hope all is well with you guys, and that your lives are enjoyable. I’ll probably post something nerdy on Wed, so until then, have a great week!

On Employment

So as of today, I am once again among the employed. Huzzah!

Having a job is kind of different. It’s more a mindset thing than anything else. Writing is now no longer a priority so much as a hobby, and that is strange. I’ve grown so used to having to struggle so hard to focus on my stories that it is hard to break out of it. Fortunately, the pace of my job can be pretty intense, so that should help me to keep my eye on the ball rather than wandering in the corridors of my imagination.

Adjusting the expectations I have of myself is another issue I’m facing. I won’t be writing 20k words a week any more, and I probably won’t be able to divide my attention between various projects like I have been. At the same time, lowering my goals has left me feeling like I’m slacking off, which I’m not. I just have a different reality to get used to. Rather than having to fill up empty time with lots of work, I’m going to need to plan relaxation so I don’t wear myself out. That is new, but probably better for me mentally.

The job itself should be interesting and fun. I likely won’t discuss the specifics of it much, given how easily stuff can be taken out of context online, and I wouldn’t want to screw up my chances at such a beautiful opportunity to work just because I waxed whiney on my blog of all things. Suffice it to say that I was able to get a position where I was once volunteering, the people I am working with are fantastic and patient with me, and I feel like if I need to I could stay here for a while. That, and the emergency room is a pretty crazy place, but that’s kind of a given. :)

So yeah, no other news yet on my applications to med schools. I am thinking of beginning the application process to grad schools at this point, but an awful lot of my future career still depends on what answers I get back in the next few months. I’ll let everyone know when they finally come in, whatever they may be. See you around!

Jakeson

May Update

So it is May now. I’ve been looking forward to this month, both because it is time to start hearing back from medical schools at last, the time when I might start being gainfully employed, and the time to start considering where life will take me for the next year or so.

The job part has been particularly interesting. Over the past six months, I’ve been volunteering at a local emergency room, where I’ve been helping patients fill out forms, giving them towels, that kind of thing. One of the departments attached to that emergency room has an opening that I will be able to take advantage of, thanks to some of the kind friends that I’ve made during my time there. I should be able to start working there in the next couple of weeks, which I’m excited for in a lot of ways. First off, I’ll be able to feel like I am helping out the hospital a lot more than I could as a volunteer. Of course, the opportunity to actually earn some money rather than just rejection letters helps my perspective on things as well.

Speaking of rejection letters, there is still no news on the medical school front. That leaves me with four different medical schools, each of which I would love to attend, still able to either drop me or scoop me up at any time. While it is good news that I still haven’t been rejected, I really had hoped that I would have some idea whether or not I would still be living in Houston or going elsewhere by now. After all, we may have to move as far as the Great Lakes depending on how it turns out, and if I want to start the application process anew, that deadline approaches at the beginning of June—and I really, really don’t want to go through that again if I don’t have to.

In terms of my other options, Wolfhound is still collecting a few rejection letters. I’m not discouraged though; I still love that story too much to dump it yet. Depending on how med schools answer back and the schedule I get from my newfound employ, I am considering trying to attend a convention so that I can actually touch base with potential agents rather than sending blind query letters. The GRE, on the other hand, went extremely well, so applying to graduate schools may open more doors for me in the future.

So that’s kind of where I’m at right now. A little bit of limbo never hurts anybody, right?

At the very least, though, President Obama appreciates what I’m going through. Or at least, somebody who has access to his signature stamp does. I got a package in the mail the other day that pronounced me worthy of the President’s Volunteer Service Award. I got a certificate, a letter that was ‘signed’ by the president, and a little pin thing. I never know where to put those. Do you ever see some guy with an Eagle Scout pin or something just walking around? I guess that would be cool. It’s like a conversation piece you can wear!

In any case, I hope all of you guys are doing well, and I’ll see you around. Until then.