Ben has been published

Valley of the Dwarfs is out for editing and will start posting soon.

Have started a new story tentatively titled The Killer of Men. It is a post-apocalyptic kind of story. Most of the Earth's human population is dead (the Great Plagues) or gone (the Great Exoduses), leaving small pockets of people out in the countryside or in what remains of cities. Jesse is twelve, going on thirteen, when the story starts. He is a member of the Red Men of the Blue Knoll clan and yearns to be blooded to prove his worthiness to his village. To do that, he much travel many days to the nearest city and take trophies (the penises of men (death), the ears of boys (wounding), or when he's older and blooded simply taking heads), but no one will guide him other than his older brother Arlen. He is captured and sent to a human retraining facility (prison camp) operated by robots. Robots rule Earth now. They have a plan to restore Earth to the paradise it was before the advent of Western Civilization by eradicating all independent human groups, but they've run into a problem. Some humans see paradise differently than robots causing anomalies in their plan and some groups of humans are not easily overcome as others. They have determined that the assassins coming out of the clans on the western plains to be a possible solution to their problem. In the course of Jesse's retraining he finds a friend in Tom and they go on to be Killers of Men.

Frankly, if I'm not careful, this could turn into a fully functioning series that has the potential to go on ad infinitum.

The Blog story announced in Sneak Peeks is on hold at the moment. As I was working on it, I hit a patch of extreme depression (luckily wonderfully mollified by Wellbutrin) and had to stop. When I came out of that psychological dip, I couldn't pick up the story line. It'll sit for awhile stewing on a back burner while I work on the new one. It has a life, buy it's gone into hibernation.

Received email today advising one job prospect is still viable. Cross your fingers, I maybe out on the road soon.

Life as I'm currently enjoying it approaching obliteration (for reasons other than impending employment).