Blast From The Past

...Or, at least, I'm sure my watchers will feel that way. A little over 2 years without a journal entry, huh? Crazy stuff. I'm sure many of you are wondering, why spend so much time silent? Well, the answer has two parts.

The first part is that, since my last journal, I graduated from my local community college with the Associate's degree I wanted...but then also lost my tutoring job there because I was no longer a student. My search for a new job has been...less than fruitful; thus far, the only result of my on-going search has been employment with a temp staffing company which provides manpower for local conventions. Has it been an interesting job? Certainly; a lot of these conventions are international, so I get to meet a ton of people from all over the world and receive insight into a bunch of different industries and fields of study that I normally would only be able to read about. The only problem is that employment is on a case-by-case basis, so weeks or even months could go by before I receive another assignment. Not terribly reliable, hence why the job search continues.

The second and more interesting part is that I have been very busy with my writing, but have been keeping it to myself and a select few others. You might recall from my last journal that I was starting to post up parts of an original story I had been writing. Unfortunately, posting those chapters quickly became cumbersome and they got fairly little attention...which isn't terribly surprising, as this is DeviantART after all and not DeviantWRITE. With my new employment status after graduating (or lack thereof), I decided now was the time to put my writing out there for the wider world to see, and also take a stab at being an actual paid author. I took all my previous work down, heavily revamped it, rewrote and polished it extensively until the quality was as good as I could possibly make it, and now...now we have this. An actual self-published book available at several online retailers, of which I present the entire first episode to all of you as a free preview. Check it out, let me know what you think, and if you like what you see, I would very much appreciate it if you could purchase the full version.

In related news, I started a blog as another means of connecting with readers. Mind you, I'll still be around on DA, but the blog will definitely see more activity, for those who missed seeing my review-rants. I might revisit my crossover fics someday, but for the time being, my job search and Renegade Elements takes up the bulk of my energy.

To all of my old watchers who are still around: it's good to see you guys again.