In spite of a lack of posting on this blog (and updates on the website...a plan to rectify those soon, incidentally), life has moved on and the moving pen has continued to writ words. Below, some updates:

- PIT6, Ver 1.2 is consistently evolving. I've managed to "revise/tweak" the first three chapters so far and bounced between using the dates of 1879 and 1881 as my time travel dates. (I wound up going back to my original choice of 1881. Yeah, I'm totally decisive!) Relocating the past setting to Bodie, California, has also made things interesting. I've always been interested in that town since I first heard of it, and I visited it in July 2005. (I also learned that wow, altitude sickness is no fun. I was so excited when I got there that I ran across the town to get tickets for a tour. The town is over 8,000 feet in elevation, so I then almost fainted because my body hadn't yet adjusted to the thinner atmosphere.) Even back then, I had an idea at the back of my mind to use it in a future PIT story, so I collected and stockpiled information about it. I'm excited to use it in this story during part of it's heyday, but it's also made me compulsive with my research.

- I am almost done with the classes that have tremendously sidetracked me since early January. I'll get a break of a couple months before some summer ones begin (for only 3 weeks), and I'm eager to make up for lost time in writing the story.

- Tomorrow (Friday 4/15) I'm doing an author talk for a middle school in the Portland-area. I'm actually terrified -- talking about myself, about PIT, about the writing process may be "easy" but I suffer from stage fright. In many ways, talking about this subject matter (which is pretty much about me) is far more difficult than teaching lessons to classes of 40 high schoolers. Really, it is. This is why I haven't done very many things like this and why I rarely seek it out. If people approach me, I always say yes (unless there's some kind of scheduling conflict or whatever), but I'm incredibly, insanely lazy when it comes to promoting myself. This is why I need an agent!

- I do plan to update the website soon (in a few weeks) once things settle down. I also have some other ideas that deal with digital media that may come up soon. Stay tuned....

Think that's about it for now! Hopefully I'll update more frequently than once a month next time!

-K