Given that the outpouring of interest has been drastically underwhelming, even from friends (who tend to top the list of people with underwhelmed responses), I've pretty much already consigned myself to not doing the Killer Whale vs. Leopard book this fall. We'll see if anyone comes through (and if the thing amounts to any more than a pamphlet), but I'm not holding my breath. Obviously, you're still welcome to write for it and I'll be sure it gets put out, one way or another, but currently no one but me seems to care or to be doing anything about it. Such is life in the modern age. There's no joy in what used to be our dreams.

The next novel is underway... Well, not exactly.

Yet another novel is underway.

You see, after finishing The Big Rusty Lie in December of 2006, I actually started another novel in January 2007. That didn't work out to my liking, so I stopped after about 3 chapters or so.

Then I started yet another novel last November. Which I got part of a chapter into before stopping.

Which I tried to pick back up again recently, but am just not feeling enough to make a go of right now. I also tried to start that first novel again... two more times.

Now I'm back to another, third novel, which is not counting two novels that were started before The Big Rusty Lie and I'll have to get back to again someday. But, for the meantime, this third novel will have to do. Which shouldn't be as hard or as complicated as either of the two I've tried to write in the past year or so, since it's based on a TV show I started writing in 1999. And each episode is basically becoming a chapter/short story. Some chapters will be longer than others, but they'll be quite long and self-contained, for the most part. Since I wrote three episodes, I'm going through and rehashing those into text format, which should prove to partially readable by someone, someday.

In fact, I've got enough of a head of steam on that one to go ahead and do the cover artwork. Which could really be said to be putting the cart before the horse. But covers are easier and more fun to make than having to sit down and churn out a quick 70,000 words or so.

But hopefully it should fluff out nicely and not take too long (which is subjective, I guess; I set a bad precident by finishing my first novel in a little over a month). The first three pages of script have so far fluffed out to about 1,000 words. And there's another 20 pages in just that episode. Which would, conceivably, put that chapter at being around 8,000 words.

That's a hell of a chapter.

Whenever I get it finished, a taste of that'll go up in the excerpt section. And, yes, it ties in with The Big Rusty Lie. Though it's not a sequel or a Bernardo Walterhaus book. In fact, The Big Rusty Lie just featured cameos from the characters in it, since it actually predates The Big Rusty Lie in conception and is the genesis of the concept of Oberwalz, my majestic 70's-style river city of gangster, lunatics, and violent assholes. So, a lot like if Detroit were in Tennessee.

But hopefully this book will light a fire under my writing and get me back to working full-time on that again (at least until I find a paying job) and hopefully push me to finish my short story collection as well. Next year might be many more things from Ryan Speck. Let's hope they're decent.

I guess I should bother to announce Curbstomp Press' plan for this year: to publish a multi-author anthology, Killer Whale vs. Leopard.

What started as a simple, nay stupid, idea a decade ago is now a full anthology. Or hopefully will be. Maybe with your help.

You see, I'm accepting submissions of short stories of any size for the anthology. The one necessity is that the stories be about Killer Whales vs. Leopards. If you want in, send me an email through the contact form.

Submissions will be needed by September, so I'll have time to edit, format, and have the thing in stores by Christmas.

Contact me with any questions or comments and, if people actually write enough stories and get them to me, the anthology will be out this year.

Despite not having written it yet, I've already got my cover art for my next novel.

Perhaps I should really start working on that before I get any further.

In the meantime, I need to finish another story for the might-actually-happen "Killer Whale vs. Leopard" anthology.