Tears of the Gods Chapter 9 Updated

Not that I expect many people care, but I made a large-ish addition to Part 9 of the Tears of the Gods. That is the first time I have gone back and made a major revision of a previously written chapter. This was needed to more properly introduce a character that plays an important part in chapters 10-12 at least, and possibly beyond, when and if further chapters ever get written.

Does that mean that Tears of the Gods is back on and will be someday finished? Maybe. I don't want to make any promises in that regard though because I have done that several times already just to let them slip, but I do really, really want to finish Tears. It is the only novel-length thing I have ever written, and while it has essentially zero chance of real publication, it is a story in my brain that wants to escape onto the page even so. Plus I think it would be cool to call myself a novelist as well as a short-story writer and poet.

Stay tuned!

Updates and Milestones: May 9, 2020

Just a few quick updates.

This past month, April, was another record month for Troy Stories, with 2,493 views. Wow! That's the first time we have had a 2k+ month in terms of page views. Needless to say, it was a huge improvement over the previous record of 1908.

Also, last week sometime, the Numenera 2 Character Generator itself passed a big milestone: 10,000 page views since publication, right now sitting at 10,192. For perspective, it was about this time last year that the generator passed the 2,000 cumulative page-view mark, and it was around this time in 2017 that the generator first saw the light of day. Pretty neat, eh?

Additionally, as mentioned yesterday, Love in the Ruins is now available for purchase.

And lastly, a PSA: the mask goes over your nose and mouth. Both nose and mouth. Yes, nose included! I know, I know... it's hot and uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as being intubated by a ventilator, if I had to guess. Also, if you pull the mask down to talk to someone, you are defeating the purpose of having the mask at all -- may as well just lick that person's eyeball while you're at it. A mask is not a magical talisman. It will not block your sputum getting on other people or their cooties getting on you if it isn't between you and them, capisce?

That's all for now. Don't let the 'rona getcha.

Love in the Ruins has been published

I'm officially a published poet now. Love in the Ruins came out a couple weeks ago, and a poem of mine is included in the anthology. Link is here:

Love in the Ruins at Founders' House Publishing

Blurb from the publisher:

"Many stories have been written already about the approaching end of industrial civilization:  about the great tragedies and the small triumphs, about struggles spread out across landscapes and struggles just as bitter within individual hearts, about the people who survive and the ones who don’t. One theme that's been unfairly neglected in deindustrial fiction is love. ... This anthology includes ten stories and three poems about love in the deindustrial future, by turns ethereal and earthy, traumatic and tender—but all of them ending with a promise of happily ever after."

Deindustrial, in case you are wondering, basically means after industrial civilization has been brought low, usually due to running out of oil. One may consider deindustrial fiction to be a sub-sub-genre of post-apocalyptic fiction (itself a sub-genre of science fiction), but deindustrial generally posits a slow decline instead of the fast collapse more typically envisioned in post-apocalypse stories. (And if you are wondering what a civilization's slow decline looks like, have a look out your window.)