I thought it had been two weeks since my last update, but it’s been a month. Sorry about that for those that have been keeping up with them.

The last month has seen a big change. Heather and I have decided to let my job search fall into a passive mode while I attempt to build a career out of freelance writing and authoring novels. We will re-examine this decision after a few months to see if it still seems viable. If some nibbles come up I will pursue them, but I am not currently actively looking.

I have started to qualify and contact companies for freelance writing work. I plan to ramp up my volume on this one to contacting 25 companies a week and re-contacting them after 4 weeks. This is largely a numbers game. Of all the companies that I contact some percentage should be viable prospects looking to get some writing stuff done. As I build a client base I am offering a discounted rate for the first project. If you or anyone you know might have a need for a freelance writer I would love to hear from you or them.

On the novel front I have it out with some readers, and I need to spend some time this month following up looking for feedback. The next novel is outlined and I am ready to start blocking out scenes. There is something more to this one though. I have joined a group doing an apprenticeship on writing good genre fiction with some very successful authors. The idea is to find the intersection of what you love to write and what the market is buying and create a novel in that space. Over the course of the apprenticeship we will go from choosing a genre (no story idea required) to marketing and releasing the novel. This process is not one that I will use the middle grade fiction for. I think I am going to do Science Fiction for it and currently have a very general story arc for 3 books with a 4th kind of hinting at me. This was not an easy choice as there was not only a decent financial commitment, but there is a time and effort commitment as well. If all goes as planned with this there will be at least two of the novels out by this time next year. A downside is that this may slow down my hoped for progress on the middle grade fiction work. An upside is that I expect it to accelerate a fiction writing career dramatically for me, shaving a good 1-2 years off of what it would otherwise take to see a path to living off of that alone and providing a network of like-minded individuals that would otherwise take years to build.

That’s pretty much it for now. The next few months to a year will require hard work and dedication, but I think the end result will be worth it.