That’s right! I sat down today and literally went through and edited one hundred and sixty (160!) pages of manuscript in one day, finishing the first edit of The Libel of Blood! I’ll be shipping it off to Mr. Ireland soon for his views on the matter, and while I wait, I have some other projects!

Firstly, Dark Aeons is also in the process of being edited, and I will be continuing to go through those tales, and finishing the last two I will be putting in there – “Afflatus Divine” and “Ascenscion.” Hopefully it will be released at about the same time as The Libel of Blood, but probably will come out a little bit later.

My other project is my next novel! For Camp NaNoWriMo in July and August, I will be working on a project tentatively titled Torrek’s Slumber, taking place in the Juxian Mythos world, involving (in the immortal words of my brother – TechnoDruids. I’ll keep you all up to date on things!

Avast! A short story I wrote recently – the “secret project” I’ve been alluding to of late – is finally published in Space Adventure Magazine, published by ER Mixon of Science Adventure Press! My contribution, “The Derelict,” is a science fiction horror story, that I describe as across between Lovecraft and Firefly, with a dash of Pratchett thrown in! I was rather proud of it, and I recommend that you all go out and purchase this independently published magazine so that you can read both my story and the other ones in there! It will be available on more platforms soon, but currently is available as a PDF here, for the bargain price of $2.99 USD!

And just to whet your appetite, here’s an excerpt from “The Derelict”:

“Going in – this is a big one, Reggie. Wonder what took it down.”

“Scans show very little surface damage; just an abrasion portside, near the rear. Not a large one, though – looks like it’s only a meter or two long. Nothing serious.”

“Then whatever got them came from inside,” Diana murmured.

“Aye, looks like. Probably just bad air filtration or something. But be careful anyway.”

Diana rolled her eyes. As if she was ever not careful. She finished placing the charges around the airlock’s exterior lock, and then moved a few meters down the length of the derelict ship, pulling herself along using bright orange cables that she had pinned to the hull. Once she was a safe distance away, she pressed the big red button in the center of the remote held in her right hand. The charges exploded silently, blasting open the airlock’s exterior door. The flames from the explosion managed to survive a few seconds in the outpouring of oxygen before their fuel supply was cut off and dispersed.

“Right. Time to see what we’ve got here.”

Reggie didn’t say anything as she watched Diana move back towards the now very open airlock from the safety of their ship. Her ship. The Buzzard, she was called; an apt name for what her crew did. Reggie preferred to think of her current day job as that of a recycler, making sure that nothing went to waste. More polite members of society would probably have called her a salvager, a derelict stripper, or a vulture. What she did for science.

“Is Diana in yet, cap’n?” called a voice from behind Reggie. She swiveled around in her bright orange plush chair and shook her head as a rather large man stepped onto the bridge.

“Just about though,” she added, pointing through the window behind her with her thumb. She shook her curly black hair out of her eyes. The man looked over the captain’s shoulder and nodded.

“She’s in now.”

Reggie swiveled back around again and watched Diana vanish into the airlock. Her voice came in over the communications channel a moment later. “Place seems empty – I’m in a side corridor, looks like. No signs of life – or death, even. Not here. Surprisingly clean, really…

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If you want to read the rest, buy the issue!

It comes, fear not! I have been working on it and on Dark Aeons of late (as well as my other project), and finally things are moving again. The Libel of Blood is currently edited up through Chapter 21, ending with the words “There was nothing left for me.” The “Winds of Madness” is also being edited by an editor, and “Dark Prophecy” has been edited now once by me. Onward to victory!

As I’ve been working on editing TLOB (and another project that I’ll reveal to you all in a few days), I’ve also managed to strike down another short story! The latest horrifying tale is called “Hell Factory,” and is mostly a conceptual piece, with no real “plot.” It was a decent piece of work, I think, though it might be hard for some to swallow or appreciate But… I like it. So there. An excerpt below:

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The cherub of sleep fell up and away from me as the burning pain jolted me awake. I opened my bleeding eyes and slowly sat up. My few moments of rest had been blissfully divine, which made my awakening all the more painful. The metal cot – if indeed it could be called even that – I had been lying upon quickly heated to the temperature of an erupting volcano, and I yelped as I rolled off of it onto the rough, sharp obsidian of the floor.

I grimaced as the black stone of midnight scraped against my raw, smoking flesh, but did not make another sound. My yelp alone was enough to bring them down upon me.

Three piercing points of pure agony manifested themselves on my back, and I collapsed as the waves of torment shuddered through my body, speeding along my back and stopping to linger at my heart and my eyes. My vision went red and then black as a wave of blistering heat cracked my dehydrated eyeballs open. I could feel what little moisture remained in them pouring down my face like tears of pure pain.

“Grzlt mbrkl!” came the voice from behind me, with a voice like the devil’s claws slowly screeching their way across a chalkboard. By now I understood the command, but my memory failed me, as it always did. In this place nothing could be relied on except pain.

The three points of pain came again in the same place. My body was not inured to the pain; no matter how much punishment it endured, every stroke of the lash or stab of the trident was worse than the one before. I collapsed onto the jagged obsidian and let my mind go, screaming and thrashing in a vain attempt to relieve myself of the pain. But my mind was clear; that was the real horror. There were no defenses to hide behind, no way to block out the torment; there was nothing between myself and the pain.

With my convulsions there came no release, and then the hellwhips descended, their flaming lengths arcing across my body, delicately wrapping themselves around me and then roughly twisting away, tearing off hunks of burning flesh as they did so.

They eventually stopped, and with it stopped much of the pain. One cannot appreciate torture fully if one is constantly in anguish; brief moments of reprieve make the return of torment all the more terrible.

As I lay sprawled in a pool of my own burning blood on the obsidian floor of Hell, my wounds began to heal and my eyes reformed in their sockets, and soon I was whole again, covered with a new layer of tender and raw skin.

Wishing to avoid more pain, I scrambled to my feet, cutting open my hands, knees, and feet in the process. “Chzrt rkltq!” I obeyed, turning about and walking away from my white-hot metal sleeping bench, past the grotesquely obese black imp that had been tormenting me. Its glowing red pitchfork was lowered menacingly, and its impish eyes flimmered evilly. A flicker of red in its hideously elongated mouth, lined with razor sharp, glimmering white fangs, told of the serpentine tongues that lurked within.

My speed earned me a jab in the shin with the pitchfork, and I nearly collapsed again with the pain. I remained upright, though, and the imp giggled and jabbed me again. The second stab was enough to send me down to the floor again, and the punishing hellwhips descended again as the imp laughed, snorted, and giggled madly at my pain.

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Now that that’s done, I only have another two or three stories left in Dark Aeons! “Afflatus Divine” is about halfway done, and it’s my next short story project. Following that, I’ll be working on “Forest of Blood,” loosely based on a Call of Cthulhu scenario I ran with limited success. There may also be another very short piece entitled “Ascenscion” thrown in there as well! However, my primary focus over the next week will be on TLOB. Let’s hope I finish editing it soon!

Finally, after far too long, I can announce that the first draft of The Libel of Blood is done! It comes in at 439 pages (and one word on page 440), making it more than a hundred pages longer than The Light of Civilization! Unfortunately, the book is still not done; on Tuesday I will begin editing the manuscript, hopefully finishing in about two weeks. After that I tack on the necessary appendices and send it off to Michael Ireland for editing, and when he’s done I’ll go through his comments and edit it one more time! Following that, the novel should be released through CreateSpace once the amazing Sarah Kindler has worked her magic and produced another cover!

As I edit TLOB, I will of course still be writing! Dark Aeons is filling up rapidly, and I estimate that there are only four more stories left to finish and write! I removed “The Thing From the Peaks” from the lineup as I have stalled on it; I may return at a later date. However the short stories, “Afflatus Divine,” “Hell Factory, and “The Stalkers” are my next goals, as well as what I think will be the second novelette in the collection, “Forest of Blood.”

And now it’s off to sleep!

University workload is amazingly high right now, and I’m a wee bit stressed at the moment, and haven’t had time for any serious writing. It looks like I’ll be failing in my goal to finish TLOB by the end of the semester, but by golly it will be done by the end of next week! I should be done with all school-related things by Tuesday, and after that point, I will be focusing all of my energy in finishing this draft – and then going back and revising. After that, I’ll whisk TLOB off to Michael Ireland and turn my attention to some short stories – and begin plotting the next novels.

But alas, for now TLOB is on hold. Unless someone else wants to take exams and do final projects for me?

Fear not, for even though I have been flooding this site with Tarot posts lately, I have not yet forgotten the site’s true purpose! I have, in between the times spent working and slaving away at projects for the university’s end of the semester, managed to get some writing done! The Libel of Blood stand currently at 393 pages – looks like this one is going to be over 400! I’m on chapter 45 at the moment – four pages into it – and it looks like there will be a chapter 46 and 47, as well as an Epilogue. I estimate that this means about 30 more pages – I’m so close! To keep to my original goal, I need to finish the first draft of the entire manuscript before the semester ends – in two weeks, really. I’m going to try (and probably fail) to get a lot done this weekend – but we’ll see what happens!

The most recent bit of what I’ve been writing reintroduces two characters you thought were dead, one from all the way back in The Loneliness of Stars. I’m writing the climax now – which is very exciting I think – but unfortunately as it ties so much together, I am unable to post an excerpt here without spoiling it for you all. Once I begin diving into my short stories again, expect many more excerpts!

I just finished watching (at an obscene hour last night) the second season of Babylon 5. I liked the first season a lot, and the second season blew my mind – and I’ve heard that the third season is even better; I’m looking forward to seeing how true that is. Babylon 5 really is like a novel for television; it’s certainly the most complex television show I’ve ever watched, with great characters, background, and twisted and convoluted plots. I didn’t think I would get used to the new commander of the station – John Sheridan – but I did, and I’m now used to him. The second season threw lots of twists at you that you didn’t expect, and ended on an ominous note with the existence of the Shadows being revealed to the universe – which spells darkness for the young civilizations. If you haven’t seen Babylon 5 yet and you’re a science fiction fan, I’d recommend doing so now – you won’t regret it!