It looks like I will have to reconfigure my page. I do not feel up to it at the moment. I cannot say I am happy about this, as I am not. I will have to figure this out.

Please just seek me out on Facebook or at any of the e-book sites in the meantime.

In the meantime, I will talk about what other projects I have in store.

First is the Private Detective novel Taylor Made. I will soon be working on another draft, responding to comments made by my beta-readers.

I also have two shorter projects, both novelette length. The first is called Evil Twin; the second is called Skinny Dipping. The first is also a mystery story. The second is a horror story. I am not certain how to classify it, and I wrote it.

These are the projects I am working on, all of which are in various stages of completion. At worst, I want to publish Taylor Made by the end of the year. At best, I want to publish all three and do some serious marketing. I also have several other projects I want to work on for next year, but I am not thinking about any of those right now.

I know I promised to create links for Jane Doe, but for some reason, I cannot. The mechanics by which I edit this site are not cooperating. I find it rather frustrating when I sit down with a task in mind and cannot carry it out.

No doubt you feel the same way.

In the meantime, please look for my novel on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords.

Thank you for your patience. It is, I assure you, more than I am feeling right now.

I published Jane Doe tonight.

I was originally going to wait until Thursday, and publish my novel after school was finished. But, I finally decided not to wait, to go ahead and do the deed. So I did.

This gives me a couple of days to finish class for the quarter, during which time Amazon and Barnes and Noble can publish Jane Doe. When class is finished, I will start promoting the book. I am already scheduled for Alan Dale's Summer 150 Tour in early July. I will look for other places to plug my novel.

I have posted links on this site to my current stories. I will do the same with Jane Doe. Look for the links in the next couple of days.

For now, I am still enjoying the great feeling of finally publishing a novel. A Novel!

Jane Doe will be out during the final week in June. I have finished the final re-write/final tweaks, and it is ready. The next step is to format the manuscript for e-books by removing tabs and such and replacing them with the proper formatting.

It will be hard to miss. I intend to announce it all over the web, in as many places as possible. This is one of the reasons why I am waiting until the final week in June, incidentally. I will be on summer break from school, then, and I will have several days to spend posting and blogging about the release of Jane Doe.

If anyone is waiting for the release  of Jane Doe, please wait a little longer. I am almost there.

And after I get Jane Doe out, I will work on my novel Taylor Made, featuring my private investigator character Charlie Rowe. I recently heard from my beta-readers, and they loved it. I am looking foreward to releasing Taylor Made later in the year.

I used to spend more time, probably, trying to get an agent or publisher than I did writing. The way it worked, of course, was: you finished writing your novel, then you sent out a flood of query letters, trying to attract the attention of an agent or a publisher. This took time away from writing.

The important thing in the life of a writer is the writing. Admittedly, I agree with Dr. Johnson: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money," but that in itself is the problem.

It is true that you can write for your own amusement. Or you can writer amateur fiction, fan fiction, or what have you, and post it somewhere on the Internet without expectation of financial reward. For such a person, the gratification of having their name attached to a piece of fiction, something they can point to and say, "I wrote that," is enough.

Some of us, however, want to make money at writing. I know I do. I'm certain many of my fellow writers do, too. We want to be professionals, by which I mean, we want to get paid for what we do.

This is part of the reason I find independent publishing so intriguing. It opens up so many more oppportunities for a writer by allowing him to bypass the Big Six. It takes links out of the chain. You still have to hire editors and cover artists, but they are fellow free-lancers. You are not dependent on the whims of a publishing house in New York City that might not give you the promotion necessary to allow you to make a livng, and probably won't pay you enough to allow you to write full time.

And you don't have to hire an agent to get your book in front of a publisher. In fact, there's really no point to having an agent in the Indie Publishing business.

An Inde Writer does not need them. No agents. No brick and mortar publishers. Just a direct link from you to the electronic publisher to the reader.

Of course, promoting your book is up to you, but that's probably the way it should be. It is your book, and no one cares as much about it as you do. Put some work in, and you can get your name out there. A Big Six publisher might not bother -- there's only so much money in the promotions budeget, and they want to spend that on the bestselling writers, not rookies or midlist writers.

I used to make a living as a career temporary worker. For ten or so years, I went from one assignment to another. One fact of the temp worker's life, at least for me, was that there always seemed to be a slow stretch in the summer when there was just no work. With time on my hands, I owuld have liked nothing better than to write, but without a book contract, I wasn't sure there was much point to it. I will be re-entering the employment field next year, and, if I have to temp again, I will be content in the knowledge that anything I write during the times of no work, I can publis myself. I will not be wasting my time writing something because I won't need a book contract.

It is great to have this freedom to write and know that I can publish. And the responsibility that goes with my fate being in my hands.

Jane Doe should be electronically published by the end of the month. Then I can call myself a professional novelist. And I can take advantage of the freedom indie publishing provides to a writer.

I am looking forward to it.

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Jane Doe, so that you, the reader, can see what I am on about.

* * * * *

The people in the pickup were an older couple. Both had white hair and the patient look of people who had fought to make a living from the stubborn soil all their lives. The woman sat in the passenger seat; the man drove.

"Please help me," the girl said.

The woman's eyes were wide with alarm. She and her husband examined the girl's face, having already taken in her bound wrists and the blood that covered her.

"Please help me," she said again. Her voice sounded unfamiliar. It was raspy, hoarse, as if coming from the end of a long tunnel. Or even like it belonged to someone else. "I'm hurt. Oh, God, I think I'm hurt bad."

Shock, fear and stress caught up to her then. She was dimly aware that the woman was getting out of the truck. Her rather small world went black, and she pitched forward, into the woman's arms.

The interview on Alan Dale's blog is now scheduled for the 5th of July.

I only have 135 pages left in the final re-write of Jane Doe, out of 315 or so. It's really more of a final tweak before publication to make some final improvements. I have a couple of idea for changes that will enhance the ending. The lead-in is currently a bit weak, and I want to take the chance to improve it before the rest of the world sees it. I believe in taking ownership of my novels. They will have my name on them, and I want my name associated with good writing.