September 12, 2020

Some minor news!

It’s three weeks in a row we’re meeting here, and I can hardly believe it! The consistency is just mind-blowing, isn’t it? To think, three times in three…

Whatever. It’s not that impressive. Lots of people do this WAY more consistently than I do, have a robust newsletter each month—or even two or four times a month—and they always have new, on the horizon projects to talk about. Sometimes, when I see the go getters really pumping out the business side of writing (the marketing and networking), I get overwhelmed. Just watching how much they’re doing makes me realize just how much I’m not getting accomplished.

But, we’re in the middle of fixing that, right?

As it happens, yours truly here actually does have a bit of on the horizon news, and I’d love to share it with you. We’ve got a few things to cover, so let’s dive into the first.

The Cerberus Rising audiobook is 1/3 complete and it is sounding outstanding! Daniel Caravetta, my long time narrator—he’s narrated three of my novels and now CR—is nothing short of brilliant and he just turns in a fantastic performance with each outing. To say he’s impressive is an understatement and even borders on insult. The first third of the book is stories dealing with Cabin Fever, and let me tell you, you can feel the walls closing in as you listen to Mr. Caravetta perform our words. It’s haunting, intense, and glorious. I can’t wait to share the finished product with the world.

Next up on the horizon, and this one just a bit further out than the new audiobook, I’ve been invited to co-write a crime novel with a very respected crime novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. I’m keeping the details vague for now, since I haven’t quite decided on saying yes or no to this project. I want to do the project very much, but have to read what’s already there to see if it speaks to me. I’ll be doing that very soon and if some magic starts to gel, I’ll be sharing it with you guys. What’s interesting about how this came about is that I’ve been planning to write a couple of crime novels after I finish my collection of horror and suspense stories, which is my current work in progress. I’ve got some ideas swirling around for some really dark, grimy, maybe even blackly hilarious books, and I’d also like to establish myself as more than ‘just’ a horror writer (not that there is anything wrong with that if you are, just saying I want to show that I’ve got more than one bag of tricks). And as those ideas have been percolating in my head, along comes this respected author with a third to half of a crime novel with a really cool story, and says, “Hey Chris, you want to finish this book with me?” Wow doesn’t cover it. Very cool to be invited, and having read this author before, I’ve no doubt the story is going to be good, and I’m hopeful I’m able to contribute to it.

Finally, even further out on a more distant horizon, some news about M. Ennenbach and myself and the collaborations we’ve been working on, both old and new. If you follow me on social media, you’ll likely have at least a passing awareness of a project Mike and I call NEPTUNE 9. It’s an epic space thriller/cosmic horror jaunt far into the depths of our solar system. If you’re not familiar, here’s the quick recap: I wrote novelette of 11K words or so for this idea I had. Then I expanded it to over 30K words thinking that it would make a fine novella. And, it did…except it still felt like something was missing. I sent it to Mike, and in a couple of months we had over 100K words and were still going strong. We’ve got plans to make it into a several book series, but have pulled back and are regrouping now with what part of the story we want to tell at a time. As we do that, we’ve come up with another really cool project that may well tie into N9 and be a mixture of crime, tragedy, cyberpunk, and just a dash of cosmic horror. Not sure exactly when we’ll get started on it, as we are both working to finish up a some other projects right now, but it’s coming and I’m looking forward to it as both Mike and I stretch out into different genres.

Not sure what else there is to rattle on about, and I just crossed the 785 word mark, so I’m probably losing you (being it’s the current year and all and no one has an attention span anymore), so I’ll wrap this up. Big things coming, lots of great stuff and ideas are flowing, and I look forward to chatting with you guys in the comments about anything at all. For all the folks out there who have supported Cerberus by buying Cerberus Rising (linked earlier in this post), THANK YOU! If you’ve read it, please consider going to Amazon and leaving a review. Good, bad, ‘meh’, doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t have to be long, just a few words, a couple of sentences will do it. It really helps and we really appreciate you!

Take care, you fine folks, and never stop reading.

Chris Miller—9-12-2020

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