Wow. TEN MONTHS? How is it that I have been gone from this place for ten whole months? Well . . . it's complicated. So let me fill all you folks in on what's been going on since then, and tell you what lies ahead (hopefully) as we prepare to bid adieu to 2023 and face whatever 2024 brings to us with our usual mix of hope and trepidation.
So, the last time I updated this blog I was about halfway through the story arc of my Abraham Lincoln alternative history novel, WITH MALICE TOWARDS NONE. Most of my spare time last winter, spring, and summer was dedicated to finishing this incredibly difficult project. Doing justice to Lincoln - especially writing speeches that could come anywhere close to matching his marvelous compassion, eloquence, and command of the English language was the most ambitious work I have ever undertaken, and I was very glad to finish the book this summer. Since my publisher has gone under, I am actively seeking a literary agent willing to rep this book to a major publishing house. If that description fits you, PLEASE get ahold of me! So far I have had several historians and Lincoln scholars evaluate this story, and I've gotten some nice reviews. It's a powerful tale with tremendous commercial potential as well as being the best thing I have ever written. I can't wait to see it in print!
December was a rough month for me. My dear friend and longtime arrowhead hunting buddy, Raymond Gathright, died of a long illness a few days after Christmas. So many good memories, so many "Ray and Indy" stories - it was a tough goodbye for me to say. His family asked me to sell his arrowhead collection, and most of his best pieces went to new homes at the Temple artifact show in June. I still have a few cherrypicked frames of his I'm trying to sell, but I was able to make a nice amount of money for his wife Shaonda, and share a lot of great stories of our hunts together with those who bought his points.
School and writing, doing occasional book signings for my novels, and conducting lots of guided river hunts filled up much of my weekend time this year. I've hunted fossils and artifacts for so long on the Sulphur River that people are willing to pay for my guide services, and I always try to send them home with a pocket full of fossils and an arrowhead or two. Of course, every now and then one of my guests has to show off and find a killer piece that leaves me feeling jealous, like the one sweet lady whose first arrowhead find ever was a nearly 3" fishtailed Clovis point! But rescuing bits of history is the name of the game, even when the nice ones go home with someone else. I've had a great time.
I've also been really active on YouTube - I finally learned how to edit and upload my own stuff, instead of relying on the help of others, and with all the river trips I was cranking out an episode a week for most of this year! If you want to watch any of my adventures, the channel is called "Indiana Smith." We made some truly amazing discoveries, both fossils and artifacts. Check it out, feel free to subscribe and leave some comments.
The biggest literary news of the year was that the Electio Publishing, the indie house that had released all six of my novels, has been bought out by a larger company called Untreed Reads. I had some very satisfactory communications with them at first, but it's been several months since I got anything other than a quarterly royalty statement, and I've seen no sign that they are aggressively marketing my books, as they promised they would. Frankly, I'm beginning to think that I have achieved all I can get from small, independent publishers. I need an agent to pitch my novels to a major publisher with a real marketing department or I'm never going to achieve the national audience I have been striving for since I published my first book nine years ago. All my efforts from here on out will be directed to that end. Wish me luck!
Other than that, life has kept rolling along. I haven't started a new book yet, but I've completed three short stories since finishing WITH MALICE TOWARDS NONE this summer, and I'll be publishing them here starting tomorrow! For Halloween, I've written a delightfully creepy adventure in which Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson investigate a gruesome killing whose circumstances have no natural explanation. I'm sure you will enjoy it.
So, once again, I apologize for the long hiatus in posting here, and I promise I'll be bringing you a lot more new content in the future! Stand by tomorrow for my newest short story! Oh, and here's a link to my YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLb4pFJx_PIDzM6SgMC6suQ
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