I Suck

Hey, kids!

I know I've been scarce around here.  Which I said at the beginning of the year I was going to do, that is, not feel obliged to robotically post three times a week like I usually do.

Here's the thing: once you give yourself a little leeway to drop the ball, you can give yourself a lot of leeway.  Like when you tell your kids they can stay up a few minutes late if they're good turns into them being up all night and fighting over the definition of "a few" and "good."

So, I ended up busting my deadline for the upcoming THE HEMATOPHAGES, which was due August 1, but I didn't get it turned in until August 7.  And then a week after that HUNTER OF THE DEAD dropped, and release day is actually about a solid seven to ten days of straight marketing.  (More on that on Wednesday.)

Which meant the next novel that I was supposed to get started on, SLASHVIVOR!, I didn't even want to look at until about three days ago.  Not to mention I can't drop the ball on my group blog, oh yeah, I have a day job which has gone straight to hell (where I usually write all of my blogposts, BTW) not to mention all the usual day-to-day trials and travails.

So, since I said I wouldn't let myself be beholden to the blog this year, I've let it drop for almost a month now.  And I really don't like being that guy.  I really don't.  You guys probably have no idea how many blogs I follow.  It's in the hundreds.  And I can't tell you how many of those are nothing more than the writer popping in every six months to say, "I know I've been terrible about updating the blog, and I swear that stops now" and then never posting again.  And this post, this one I'm writing right now, it sounds exactly like one of those posts.  But I swear to God I don't want to be that guy.

So I have to readjust.  I don't want to be beholden to the blog, but I don't want it to turn into a wasteland either.  I'm proud to say this blog has been around for almost eight years and it's never been silent longer than a few weeks.  In fact, this latest period of spotty updates may be the worst in Manuscripts Burn history.  To be honest, I don't really feel like skimming back through eight years and 1190 posts to be sure.  But it's probably the worst.

So I'm going to adjust fire.  I'm going to make sure that if you've gone to the trouble to make Mansucripts Burn one of your destinations on the internet, there will be something fresh here for you to read.  But I'm also not going to let myself get burnt out on it.  So what does that new paradigm look like?  I don't know.  And I don't want to make any promises either.  I'm just going to resolve to suck less.  And I already have one in the can for you on Wednesday, so, in the short run at least, problem solved.