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I’m such a bad blogger! I never seem to find time to update this thing. Even now I’m doing it when I should be doing something else. Oh well.

Several months ago, I had set the arbitrary goal of trying to quit my day job at the end of June this year to be a full time writer/publisher. That does not seem very likely at this point. In fact, I think 2014 is going to be a write-off year.

I am planning on spending most of this year promoting, promoting, promoting. I’ll try to get some writing done in between. I am going to attempt to go to as many book events as I can afford. My current schedule is shaping up like this:
Mar. 28-30: The Novel Experience Event (Atlanta)
Apr. 11-13: Missouri Writer’s Guild Conference (St. Louis)
May 16-18: South Carolina Book Festival (Columbia)
Aug 8-10: When Word Collide (Calgary)
Sep 5-7: Rocky Mountain Fictions Writer’s Gold Conference (Denver)
Oct. 24-26: Novelists, Inc. (St. Pete’s Beach, FL)
Feb. 2015 (dates TBD): Coastal Magic (Daytona Beach, FL)
Feb. 2015 (dates TBD): AWP Conference (Seattle)
Apr. 6-8, 2015: London Book Fair (London, UK)
Apr. 10-11, 2015: Royalty Weekend (Ticehurst, UK)

These will mostly be opportunities to promote my novels and myself as an author, but I’ll also be pushing Bygone Era Books as I go. At the South Carolina Book Fair and the London Book Fair, the publishing company will be the primary focus.

My only books I foresee coming out in 2014 are the annual Reference Guide to the Royal Families (came out at the beginning of January) and volume 2 of The Descendants of Charles II which is scheduled for release June 15th.

I am still picking at When Gods Wake, but have not made any measurable progress on it. Once I get “Charlie 2.2” to a point where it is not absorbing every waking minute, I’ll get back to it.

I do have 3 short stories either awaiting publication or under consideration. They are all alternative history stories:
Charlotte’s Passion centers on Princess Charlotte of Wales, daughter of George IV, who was heiress-presumptive until her death in childbirth. This explores the world if Charlotte had lived. It reads a lot like a romance novel. This story has already been accepted for an anthology of Denver writers to be published by Thursday Night Press. However, there is no publication date yet.

Nikita Saves the Empire is set in Russia and explores the outcome if Tsar Alexander II had not been assassinated. This has been submitted to the Historical Novel Society for a short story contest. The top prize is $2000, but the top 10-12 stories will be published in an anthology produced by the HNS.

The Do-Over is more of a time travel story. A middle-aged man who never really got a break in life is given the opportunity to go back to being a teenager and doing it again. The ending is a pretty special little twist. This story is very Denver-centric and has been submitted to be considered for an anthology that is being published by the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers to showcase their members’ writings and has a theme of “Crossing Colfax” which might end up being the title of the anthology.

Book 3 of the Mage trilogy will happen eventually, but It’s still on the horizon. It will start as a historical novel but its plot comes to the present day, and I am kind of waiting to see how some big current events play out before I get going on it.

I have two royalty-related books planned in addition to the Charles II series. One will revisit the Habsburg family to celebrate the 20th anniversary of my first book being published. That will come out in 2016 sometime. I am torn between two titles: Habsburgs in the 21st Century, a reference to the style in which my Romanov book was written, or Forever Habsburg. At the moment I’m favoring the latter.

The second is a biographical work of the Mountbatten/Battenberg family as a group. That one is still in the earliest “thinking it through” stages so there is no prediction on when it will come out yet.

So yes, I am keeping busy; and I will try to post more often, but no promises!