Tobias on hold, starting new project

Hey all. It's been quite some time since I've posted non-Daily Toreador/gaming related stuff here.

Part of that has been because I've spent most of my writing time advancing my video game industry "cred." This has been going surprisingly well in some ways, as I've developed solid relationships with PR people at companies like Nintendo (free Wii? Why yes, thank you. I'll be happy to review Animal Crossing on that). This helps in part because it's a much more guaranteed way to make money than fiction is. Writing about video games - even in a freelance capacity - may be something I always do. Who knows?

But another reason I've focused on writing about games has been me being discouraged with my fiction work.

Long story short, I'm hereby placing the Talebearer Trilogy on hold for now due to quality assurance issues.

I appreciate all of my readers and and reviewers that have been with me through that project. Rest assured that I have learned a LOT from your comments and concerns.

To those of you who did really enjoy what the story had been so far (thank GOD there were at least a few of you. It was really encouraging to have people genuinely enjoy the story even when I was having doubts about it), rest assured: I WILL return to Tobias and his story in the future. It's a tale that is very much important to me, and I probably won't rest until it's published or until I die. That said, it may be quite a bit different than it was when you read it - but this is a good thing. Parts of it were horribly, horribly cliched, and I want to move away from that. The Talebearer story is one that I believe is unique in the end, and has a lot of potential... But it wasn't fulfilling that potential in its current form.

So it's time to put it in the drawer for awhile and revisit it at a later date.

In the meantime, I've got another, single novel project that has been on my mind for some time. The current plan is to write at least a rough draft of the entire thing - start to mind-bending finish - before the end of the summer. Whether that's a realistic goal or not remains to be seen, but it's a goal nonetheless. And I work best under pressure and deadlines (I can't tell you how many thousands of words were written literally the night before a story/paper has been due... and earned me an 'A').

I'll no doubt welcome test-readers for this project like I did with Talebearer, but not for some time. I think all the time I spent talking about Tobias made me grow weary of him, in some ways, so I'm going to stay quite about this new book. At least for now.

While writing this novel I will also be trying to get some freelance stuff published as a game journalist (I need money somewhere) and maybe pen a short story or two. We'll see.

Prayers are, as always, extremely welcome. If you're not of the praying persuasion, then moral support works too. It's easy to get discouraged when I walk into Barnes & Noble and see hundreds of fantasy and young adult novels that my work might be buried under whenever published.

I'll try to keep people posted as the summer progresses - via Twitter if nothing else (username Sargus). It's much easier to spout 140 characters of an update saying "Working on Chapter 7!" than it is to type up one of these blogs.

So again, thanks for all the support from you guys. I hope I continue to have it moving forward.

This is the way it was meant to be.

- Britton