Weekly Update - 8/13/25

You know what you never expect to do in your life? Break a bed. You know what you never expect to do twice in your life? BREAK A BED. I broke a bed in my early 20s, and I attribute that at the time to me not knowing how to properly build IKEA beds. I think I'm going to attribute this time to the same issue. Heh. Yeah, that's definitely it. (The first time definitely wasn't from me tossing my girlfriend at the time onto it and the connection between the headboard and the base just breaking. Definitely not. But sadly, that assuredly wasn't the cause this time around.) This bed's starting to have problems with the slats holding the mattress up staying in place, and I may have to replace it. Such is life. I'm just not happy about it, because if I end up having to do that, it'll be a couple of days of work, because I have a lot stored underneath the bed, and if I'm doing that, I'm probably doing a yearly cleaning and purging of stuff in my room. So that may take up most of the next few days at some point in the near future. Just a heads up. I might be able to fix it if I strip everything off the bed, tilt up the mattress and make a hard go at resetting the support slats. That'll be the first thing I'll do tomorrow and see if that lets me get it back into a solid state.

I spent a lot of the last couple of days working on helping other Quaranteam writers with their projects, doing some tweaking, editing, suggesting and prep work. We welcomed someone new into the QT writers room with a proposal that I can't wait to read. I also spent quite a bit of time working on 2:45, which I dropped Monday. We're only 6 chapters away from the end of Book 2, and I know how that's going to end now. What's funny is that the thing I thought was going to end B2 is now going to happen earlier, and it's going to feel like, "how do you top this?" when it drops. Remember me saying that. Because B2 will end BIG. And then next year, we'll start in on B3. As a reminder, I'm probably going to take a month or two off from Quaranteam Prime between books 2 and 3, while I'm putting together print versions of Book 2 and maybe also of If I'm Honest and CARP, although I may be doing that work sooner.

Speaking of print, at some point over the next few weeks, I'll also be putting together a print version of the first Druid Gunslinger book, Neon Stonehenge. The cover is being worked on right now, and in the next week or two, I'll put together the print version, write the foreword, write the foreword to the foreword (explaining how deep this meta rabbit hole goes) and have the writer's room review it for errors and whatnot. The plan is to have that out and available the first week or second week of September, thereabouts. That also means I'll probably be reopening the Autographed Books store back up. I'll mention this when I do, but if you're ordering a signed copy of Neon Stonehenge, you'll need to specify who you want it signed by - Devin McTaggart, Andy Rook or Blake Conrad. Ha!

Not sure what I'll be dropping for Friday, but we'll figure something out. To be honest, those of you who were around a couple of years ago when I finished B1, you'll know I hit some slowdown when we got to the last few chapters of that book, so I could nail the landing properly. I'll try and pick things back up, though. I promise you, I'm trying to get thing back into some semblance of where they used to be. (But I still need to go see Fantastic Four in theaters before it drops out, so maybe I do that tomorrow also.)

I was also hip deep in 2:45 so I missed the window I had to send out the stories to public sites, it'll just be a big beefy week on the public sites. I'll send stuff to them tomorrow nice and early, so we're ahead of the curve. - 8/16 - QTUM 6, QT2:35, QTPT 23; 8/23 - Pack 16; 8/30 - Captains' Days 5; 9/6 - QT2:i7; 9/13 - QT2:36, NS 13.

Anyway, that's where we are for the week. Take care of yourself. Even when things are looking bleak, there's still joy to be had in the world, and the last thing you want to do is let those bastards get the better of you. Keep going, even out of spite. It's worked for me for a long time.