Update

Status

Wouldn’t you know it? Just as soon as I get a good rhythm going something knocks me off the horse. Not much time (or mood) for writing right now as my son has been in the hospital for a few days. It doesn’t seem too serious (being in the hospital in Korea does not indicate the same level of severity as being in the hospital in some other countries might) and he’s generally comfortable and having a good time since he’s taken possession of daddy’s laptop and is getting way way more computer game and TV time than he’d normally get. I’m home alone for the afternoon and early evening so I’m going to try and follow the advice of Neil Gaiman and make good art:

Why Start One New Adventure In Life When You Could Start Two!

I went and did something a little crazy.

As anyone who has been stopping by here probably knows I am trying to make it as a writer. The big dream right now is to get to a point where I can make a living (at a level that can support my family) writing fiction. The only problem with this? Until it happens it’s just not something I can plan on. Even if it does happen it’d probably be years before I could build a career up to a level where it could be my one and only job. And that’s probably a best case scenario!

Continue reading

Brief Update

Just wanted to say that I’ve been caught up in the end of my vacation (last week) and getting back to work for the start of a new semester (this week), but there will be things coming soon. More stories, more talk of jazz and comics, more stuff in general. Also, soon I hope I’ll be talking about the JukePop launch and some related exciting news. That’s all for now, be back soon.

Looking For Beta-Readers To Join Me In An Experiment

Hello any and all,

I’ve recently “finished” a new story and I’d like to try a little experiment with it. You see, when I say “finished” I mean I’ve done a first draft with one editing pass. My next usual step is to ask a few close friends to read through it and give me some feedback. These are my beta-readers, there are three of them and I’ve already sent the story off to them.

What I’d like to try is getting a wider circle of beta-readers to give me feedback, and that’s where you come in. If you are reading this, and interested in helping me out then I’d like to share this new story with you and hear what you think about it. I’d also like to use this as an opportunity to try out google drive.

Still with me? Ok – the story I’ve just finished clocks in at about 3,300 words and is probably best pigeonholed as Science Fiction Horror. I am looking for a maximum of 10 extra readers. Frankly, there probably aren’t 10 people interested in helping my out this way, but just in case I’m putting that limit up front.

If you would like to help me out in this (and I fully acknowledge that you would be doing me a great favor) then please contact me through the contact page above, or email me at jxilon [at] hotmail [dot] com, or leave a comment below with a real email I can reach you at. I will then share the story with you on google drive, which is where you will also be able to leave comments.

I’ll also share a small document with you giving some guidelines for giving feedback on the story but I’ll also say this here: I am not looking for hugs and congratulations. Sure, I want to hear what you like about the story, but I really need to hear what you don’t like about it. It’s the things that don’t work I need to identify and fix before moving on to the next stage with this story.

That’s all for now, I hope to hear from some of you.

I’m back.

Status

Hey, I know this blog doesn’t have a lot of traction yet, but there are at least a few people following it through Google Reader or other means. For those I just wanted to saw sorry nothing happened over the last week. My wife and I decided to spend the last week doing a crazy amount of house work. The place is starting to look nice. We’ve got some new furniture, thrown out some old, rearranged every room, hung some new curtains and rid ourselves of a lot of junk. It’s been nice to get it done while we both had a lot of time to use up this past week, but it’s kept me away from any writing, blogging or social media.

I will be getting back to normal now. For this blog I want normal to be at least 3 posts a week and I’d be happier with a post daily. We’ll see how that goes for the rest of the summer.