August is coming to a close which means it’s State Fair season back in Minnesota. I hope to get us to visit that fair again in the next few years. Every year is obviously not happening anymore, but I do miss it.

Out here the kids have settled into school and the new routine. The computers in the house have been having issues though. Since the upgrade to Windows 10 mine has been restarting as much as 4 times a day blaming the video driver. (Usually about once every 12 hours though) Some searching has revealed the issue to possibly be related to having an SSD as a primary and a SATA as a secondary drive. I hope whatever it is it gets fixed fast. I am working such that stuff is saved to the cloud in near real-time, but it’s frustrating when the computer restarts two times in less than an hour. The laptop is better, but still restarts occasionally and has screen blackouts once in a while.

All of this wouldn’t be quite as bad if I had income coming in by now, but that hasn’t yet happened. The freelance bit is hard to get started due to my lack of connections and introvert tendencies. I’ve been trying to vary my marketing approach to get results. I think I need to figure out how to offer a writing service a company needs to them still. the novel is almost ready to be written. I’ve got it mostly planned and the group I’m in has September as a writing month. I’d love to see the first two books of the trilogy written by next year, and that’s not too far-fetched. I’ve started working on some in-world short stories to help build a mailing list and maybe even get early sales, but of course as a new author that can’t justify spending $300 on a cover for a <5,000 word short story that’s not likely to make more than $50 over the next few months. (It’s about the ROI of the investment. the math just doesn’t work yet.) The job market continues to not be great. I’ve had a few leads over the last month, but they have either been development jobs, to far to commute, or didn’t result in an interview.

Speaking of the short stories. The first one, bad cover and all, is out now and currently free. (Amazon Link) I won’t get any royalties if you pick it up now, but if you do and can honestly leave a positive review, that can only help me. Something to remember, it’s a science fiction/cyberpunk short. If you’re a die-hard romance reader you probably won’t like it. However, you could send it to someone you know that likes that type of story?

That’s all for now. I really want to finish that outline ASAP. Hopefully tonight, probably tomorrow. Writing month starts Thursday.