The Journal of Michael Merriam

careswen and I traveled back to Oklahoma over the Christmas holidays to visit with family and friends. This was the first time we had been back since 2009, and careswen had the lovely idea that I should do some public readings and storytelling events in our old home state. It was a great idea. None of our family or friends in Oklahoma had been to one of my readings, and I was incorporating my storytelling-as-performance into what I was doing.

( Long Entry With Pictures )

Back from a short vacation in the land of chocolate—aka Hershey, PA— where we learned that the secret to making Hershey Chocolate is apparently singing cows. Saw the Hershey Museum and Chocolate World. Pennsylvania is very pretty at this time of year, all fall colors and cool days.

Now that I'm home, despite the head cold, I am ready to get to work on something— anything—new. I'm starting to get that twitchy feeling that overcomes me when I'm not writing. I still haven't received the first round of edits from Carina Press for Last Car to Annwn Station and I'm not quite ready to hit the second draft of the Steampunk Mystery Spy-Thriller novella, so I'm considering what to work on in the meantime. I'm a big believer in having a project or three going at all times. On to the next thing, I say.

I have the opening of a handful of short stories, all of which I intend to write at some point and none of which I'm ready to tackle for one reason or another. I could get going on another novel, but the ones that want writing are both sequels to the Monster-Hunting Barista novel, and I'm a little leery of writing a sequel to a novel I haven't sold yet, though I'm more inclined to go that route now that I've at least proven to myself that I can sell a novel.

I guess I can open all my works-in-progress and poke at them until one takes flight.

Question: I see that Scrivener has a beta-version for Windows now. Those of you who have used Scrivener, what are your thoughts? Is it something useful to you as a writer? Why? What do you think are its strengths and weaknesses?

Tired. Safe. Ready for Bed. greykev was a champion and picked up the Reverend Selena from the vet's and brought her home this afternoon.

Why am I just now finding out about this "Fantasy Matters Conference" at the University of Minnesota? How did I not know this was happening? Aarrrggg!!!

We wrapped up the SF RPG yesterday, in a marathon finale. I'm glad to finally be done with it. It seemed like the players had a good session. Now I shall take a few months off from running a game and rest a bit. I have promised to run another campaign for some folks, and then I might be turning in the GM/DM hat (what, you don't have a GM/DM hat? Actually, neither do we) for a couple of years.

I am expecting a lazy day today, and then off to D.C. in the morning. I expect to be out of touch while gone (leaving Monday morning and getting home Wednesday night) so don't break the intarwebs while I'm away.