News Update

It's been a while since I posted any personal updates about what's going on with me writing-wise and otherwise. So here's a brief list of things:

1) I finished the first draft of The Man-Eaters of Tsavo today!!!! It is the novel I've been working on for the past four months or so. In it's current (rough) form, it weighs in at about 95,000 words, making it my first legitimate novel manuscript. Right now I'm going to put it aside for about two months, get it out of my head, then come back to it after that time and read it with fresh eyes for the revision. I'm not sure whether I want to work on it as a part of my graduate coursework or not. Still deciding whether a novel is something that should be workshoped. But anyway, that brings me to item number two...

2) In another month or so I'll be packing up my belongings and moving with Shannon to Colorado, where I will be studying fiction at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I've been meaning to post this last bit of news for quite some time, but the delay between when I found out about my acceptance there and when I finally heard from all of the other schools I applied to was so long it sort of lost its motivation. I'm really excited though. I was also offered a teaching assistantship, and just found out that the course I will be teaching is Intro to Creative Writing, which is a huge relief because before that I assumed it would be Freshman Comp or something like that. So yay!

3) I've got a couple of old stories I'm going to return to, revise, and then begin circulating in fiction competitions, so more news on that will be coming in the next few months. It's crazy how many ideas occur to you when you are bogged down by one single project. Since beginning work on MET I've probably had about ten solid story ideas occur to me, and it's taken real discipline not to put it aside and pursue some of these other ideas. My palate is clean though now, and I can start sifting through that backlog of ideas. One thing I'm planning on doing is returning to my first novel attempt, The Body and the Blood, and revising it back into a novella that I will then go on to self-publish and make available through a website I'm going to start designing soon. So lots and lots of stuff! Stay tuned for more details. I'll try to post stuff like this more regularly and not fall so far behind!

Best Wishes,

Nick