I sold a total of 18 books at WorldCon, my new record. I doubt I’ll beat that record at RI Comicon, but I’ll try.

Fire is being edited as we speak; “War Mage” is next on the docket. I sent Blood From a Stone for a read-over to see if it’s worth producing. What’s next is a story for a possible anthology next year. I’m writing character sketches about them right now, and the story is relatively formed in my head.

One thing I’ve found out in my writing and editing is that I have to work on my endings. They seem abrupt and quick, coming out of nowhere and just “ending”. I need to learn to pull them out a little more and make them not sou out of left-field.

I noticed how my writing has improved and changed over the years by looking at “Aries” versus, say, “Leo”. Aries is full of detail, superfluous in places, showing off my knowledge. Leo tells the damn story. As my editor says, “Your writing is clean and sparse.” It tells the story without going off on tangents or down rabbit holes. Aries didn’t do that. Aries is my “I know a lot about WW2, and I’m going to show you.”\ I wrote that story off my obsession with WW2, which is why it goes down rabbit holes and goes into detail.

Even seeing Homecoming versus Grimaulkin Redeemed, I can see the difference. Perhaps my writing is getting better. Perhaps I’ve found my voice, finally.

What next? Well, I could continue the zodiac theme by dividing them into Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable signs. I could have the planets as Gods on Earth. I was going to do the seven deadly sins, but that’s been done so much. Have the seven graces been done? That would be a switch. That would be Max’s story.

As for me…the short story, maybe some poetry. An anthology of stories from Grimaulkin.

We shall see.