News, Updates, and Minor (Major) Ramblings

 Another test. I'll delete it, but it'll be in RSS feeds forever lol. What's weird is no automation service is supporting Mastodon except Beehive.

August is almost over, and I had this post in my drafts since the beginning of the month and did not post it. Love how my brain operates. Just a quick check in this time around. I have paused on my Fate Unseen edits to do the edits on the first book of my new novella series IFL Tales. I definitely just made that up since I don't have an official name for the series. I currently have a name for the book, but I might need to change it because there are a number of books titled with same thing, and that's a sure way for my lil ole novella to end up buried even though it's not going wide for awhile. Anyway, I created a cover few weekends ago, and got a two thumbs up from one of my favorite people who I can trust not to bullshit me, which is exciting. I'm not sure if I've gone over what IFL Tales is about or what this first novella will be about, but I'll hold off on going into them because I want to be in my third round of edits before I do that. By that point, I k...

Oooh a second blog post for the month. I really must be getting back into this author thing, huh? We'll see. This post is more of a housekeeping/update post. I realized there were a lot of inconsistencies with my branding, so I've decided to eliminate the DJ Small Books, and just be DJ Small - Author. For the most part, it doesn't really change anything. I'm going to be updating my logo and the titling on some of my pages, but there shouldn't be any disruptions. If you run into any issues, let me know and I'll get it fixed. Work wise, Adventures of Swift will not be happening this year. While I was doing some editing, I realized I put myself in a hole with that one, and as I learned with Avery Lawson: The Last Pureblood, I don't want to leave things in a state where it sort of just ends and leaves people hanging. I got the message on that one lol. So, with that being said, I'm going to work on my novella, which I'm hoping to have out by the end of ...

It's been 9 months since I've posted anything, and my goodness am I sorry. I've been in such a hole and have been trying so hard to dig myself out of it that I've completely let everything slip away from me. Which, in all honesty is a disservice to the people who are out there waiting for me to come out with something new or pick up on one of my series. While I know I have no obligation to put out stories and what not, it does make me feel shitty. At least from a reader's standpoint. As a writer, I know I can keep writing for myself because I've been doing that for decades now, but as a reader to get invested in an author and have them just vanish is a little upsetting. So, I want to apologize for the vanishing act and I will try to get better at it. Let's talk about a huge thing though. I didn't realize how many people followed my author pages on Goodreads, Amazon, and Smashwords. It's not a big number or anything, but there are a number of people f...

And here I am late with posting, but vibing out to Beyonce's "RENISSANCE" This is a no-skips album for me, but her last couple albums have also been that for me. I love me some Bey. I know you all didn't wander over to hear me talk about Beyonce. Anyways, this might be the last blog post of the year. Between real life obligation, holiday ruckus, and me plain old forgetting I might not update the blog. I'll try to, but just know it is a possibility. Have you been to my site? Well, if you haven't, there isn't much happening there. In fact, it has been brought offline. I had originally taken it down to do some changes, but then I was like, "Y'know what? I'm just going to take it down for the rest of the year." It's one less thing I have to think about and I can do the updates and changes at my own pace without having an imaginary clock ticking in the back of my mind. I've provided a link on the landing page to buy books and to contac...

We've hit the 'ber months (September, October, November, and December), which means there will be a crap ton of holidays coming our way annnnd my birth month! Even though the days are getting shorter and the weather will be colder it's still a great time of the year. Anywho, it has been a minute! I honestly have no excuse or explanation for it. My mind was elsewhere and I didn't post anything in July or August. I was about to skip September, but then I saw how long it had been and decided against it. I'm certain some of you (maybe 5 people in total. I think mostly bots come to my blog wanting to spread their spam) are wondering what I've been up to. Well, I am proud to announce I've finished writing the second book in the Detective Miller series, Grisly Politics . The fact that it only took me nine months to write is actually a little surprising because, 1) it felt like it was taking forever to write, and 2) my drive has been complete shit the last few month...

Goodness it feels like June flew by, but not really. I think I owe it to those two weeks I had off from work. During one of those weeks, I went to Mass to visit some friends, and it was a bit of a culture shock. Back in 2016, Mass legalized marijuana and this is also the same year I happened to move out of the state. When my friend and I got into the Springfield area, there were cannabis dispensary billboards everywhere. It was SO wild, but like I loved it because I'm pro-marijuana. Then on top of that Springfield got a casino, which I knew about, and when they announced it, I thought they were going to build some gigantic skyscraper thing and mess up all of Downtown Springfield, but nope. They actually didn't do a bad job. The building blends in with the other ones, which have been there since forever, and it's pretty nice. Honestly, if it weren't for the signage, you wouldn't know there was a casino there. I did do a bit of gambling. I had managed to break even, p...