Gruman F4F

In the future, when I look back at the Summer of 2015, I know I’ll remember it as a whirlwind. On top of releasing Out of the Tank and Buccaneers, my only daughter was married, my youngest son was also married and my eldest son’s wife gave birth to my first grandson. (before you ask, I’m way too young to be a grandfather, but I love having a grandson, so I put up with it)

You might ask what all this has to do with a Grumman F4F. So like most of you, on top of my personal life, I also have a job as a software developer. One of the big tasks I have each Summer is preparing for our annual client conference, where I have the opportunity to talk about the software my team has been working on for the last year.

This year, my boss, chose to hold the conference in San Diego. Upon landing, a friend of mine and I discovered that San Diego hosts the Midway Museum. The museum is the actual Midway Aircraft carrier that has been restored and floats in San Diego Bay. You can imagine my excitement when discovering we had enough time to take a walk through this magnificent old girl. The Grumman F4F  in the picture is proudly displayed on a lower deck, where we were allowed to simply walk up to and interact with it. To say it was beautifully restored is an understatement.

At this point, you’re probably becoming concerned that I’ve fallen behind in my duties as a science fiction writer. I’ve even had a regular reader of this blog question if perhaps I might not be alive anymore(although I suspect he was kidding). The answer to this is a resounding no, I haven’t fallen behind on writing. What I will admit to, however, is having fallen behind on a couple of my other duties. Most notably to you has been my lack of blog posts, while most notably for me has been my lack of promotion. The advertising budget is virtually untapped and my blog is unloved, but writing continues.

At this point, you’re wondering when the next Privateer Tales book will be available. My best answer is that it is a bit of a crap shoot. The next in the series is called ‘A Matter of Honor’ and I’m making great progress having just crossed the 50,000 word mark. For those of you wondering what that means in terms of percentages that’s well over 50%. Generally, I’m shooting for 85-90,000 words, although when all is said and done, it varies widely (Parley was 81,000 words, Buccaneers was 115,000 words). My goal is to be done before Thanksgiving, but really, I just don’t know what I’ll run into.

I’m also working on two other projects; a science fiction story right now that I just call Biggston and an Urban Fantasy story called ‘Wizard in a Witchy World’. Both of these stories are sitting at about 20,000 words and are hoping that I’ll give them some attention. The fact is, once I get started on a Privateer Tales story, I just can’t stop. So there’s no estimate when I’ll get either of them completed since Liam and Tabby keep jumping ahead of the line.

So that’s been my hectic summer and my grandson is on his way over for spoiling so I’ll wrap it up here. As always, I enjoy hearing from you, so feel free to drop a comment or join us on facebook for a chat.

Happy Reading!

Jamie