I’ve kept quiet on my blog for a while—just to keep my head above water. I’ll try to catch up after surviving one of the most intense deadline months of my career.

Yes, there was the usual madness of the holiday season, with numerous relatives visiting, family time, the WordFire New Years Party (for those who had nothing else to do), but then January hit with full force.

First, I had to do the final manuscript polish for Dan Shamble, Zombie PI #4, SLIMY UNDERBELLY. I had all the comments from the test readers, and needed to do one more cleanup through the book before it went into production through Kensington Books (US) and WordFire Press eBook (rest of the world). Next came a final read and edit of HELLHOLE INFERNO, the 600-page grand finale of my Hellhole Trilogy with Brian Herbert; once I finished with that, I delivered it to my editor at Tor Books and my group of test readers.  That book comes out this August.

Then amazon contacted me with an offer to write a psychologic SFl thriller for their Kindle Worlds program, as a spinoff to the novel BRILLIANCE by Marcus Sakey. The catch was, I had to deliver the final ms in only a little over three weeks…and I hadn’t even read the source novel yet.  So that was a “drop everything and be frantic” project…but with help from WordFire Press managing editor Peter J. Wacks, I was able to deliver a complete 53,000-word novel before February 1, TWIST.  It will be available for Kindle download in only a few weeks.

In the meantime, I also had to write an original Dan Shamble novelette, “Role Model,” about Dan Shamble and his Best Human Friend Officer McGoohan solving the murder of a costumed fan at a convention.  That one was written and delivered, and will be out in the FANTASTIC DETECTIVES anthology from Fiction River.

And, before the end of the month, I had to write and deliver the third script for CLOCKWORK ANGELS The Graphic Novel to BOOM! Studios.  This is an awesome adaptation, and in order to give our artist Nick Robles the time he needs to draw it all, I have to deliver my scripts on time! First issue comes out in March.

I thought I had a chance to catch my breath after delivering all these projects, but then Rebecca Moesta and I had to turn my attentions to the next Superstars Writing Seminar, February 6–8, about 70 attendees with all the administrative busy work of running a conference.

I’ll do a report on that wonderful conference soon, but first I need to get back to reading these 90+ short story submissions for two anthologies Rebecca and I are putting together as part of a workshop for Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch…and right now I’m sitting in a hotel room in Dallas getting ready for a weekend as writer guest of honor at ConDFW.

And I still have a lot of blogs to catch up on…