The month of October (the first 31 days, at least) was FANTASTIC for me . . . for everything other than writing. Halloween is a month-long celebration for me (more so than it normally is year round!), and once the annual HP Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon kicks off the first weekend of October, this monster kid goes into full Halloween Kid mode.

What does that mean? It means I find as many classic horror offerings and activities within an hour’s-drive radius, and I gleefully run myself ragged doing as much as possible, sleep and health be damned. (In this case, literally, as my unwelcome depression kicked in hard the first day of the HPL Film Festival. Not. Cool. Fortunately, the eldritch experiences of exploring cosmic horror managed to drive it away by the second day.)

All this Halloween-ing also meant I spent very little time on most of my creative projects. Monster Kid Radio didn’t go anywhere, and I even put out some bonus-lengthed episodes in October. But the writing . . . the writing I let suffer.

I know. It’s a far cry from my “Same old goals, new approach” mindset I tried to adopt earlier this year.

However, now that Halloween is behind me (the actual day, not the way-of-life mindset), I’m trying to get back on track. I went out of town the day right after Halloween (October 32nd for me, November 1st for most normal folk), and I brought my laptop with the intention of banging out some words and maybe even getting some walking in. I’ve succeeded for the most part – today was the first day since I’ve been out of town that I did not go for a walk in the morning as I let my sore body talk me out of it. The writing? Slower than I would have liked, BUT . . .

I’m pulling together some older short stories, giving them an editing pass, and formatting them for an upcoming Kindle release. This will be a collection of stories featuring a character of mine that has spent more time in my head than on the page (or epage), and it’s time to change that. Keep an eye out for that. And remember the name Marc Temple.

I’m also starting to rekindle my love for sword-and-sorcery, something I’m blaming on/thanking the HPL Film Fest for. Being around all those fans of Lovecraft and all things weird fiction usually puts me in a weird mood, and since Robert E. Howard is my favorite writer . . . well . . . I’m all in on the s-and-s front.

Which means I’ve pulled out two s-and-s short stories of mine that I abandoned a few years ago. This morning, I gave one a quick read, and . . . umm . . . yeah, I’m going to have to rewrite it, methinks. And I need to drop all those bloody semi-colons. Apparently I had a love affair with semi-colons back then. (Semi-colons up the colon!)

But if rewriting a story was good enough for Robert E. Howard, it can be good enough for me. And besides, I missed the main characters of those two short stories almost as much I missed Marc Temple.

I plan to get on a plane tomorrow (the airline wouldn’t let me check in for a flight schedule for October 41st for some reason), and head back home. I’m hoping I can bring some semblance of this writing routine with me!

(Oh, and last month, I was lucky enough to be interviewed by Casey’s Rock N Roll Gazette. Check out my interview here!)