Happy New Year and Spectraland Saga Factoids

To all my readers (of both blog and novel), thank you for your support. 2012 was an amazing year, and hopefully we can keep it going in 2013 and beyond. If you have any suggestions or ideas for topics that you'd like to see me write about in this blog, please let me know.

The second book in the Spectraland Saga is coming along well. I'm now up to about 13,000 words, which translates to roughly 52 pages. It would be nice if I could get it all done by the fall of next year, but we'll see. I'm not going to rush it.

2013 may also see the unveiling of recordings by a couple of the bands that I'm involved in. Keep watching this space for updates.

I'll leave you with some random Spectraland Saga factoids (you head these here first!):

- I chose Suzuki as Joel's last name because I wanted a name that was easy to remember and pronounce. I figured that most people in the U.S. were familiar with the Suzuki car company and, maybe to a lesser extent, Ichiro Suzuki (formerly of the Seattle Mariners, now with some moderately successful team on the East Coast).

- Felicity's name came from an older story idea I had that involved kids who could transform into animals (yes, I know, so original). She was going to be able to transform into a cat, so, you know, cat . . . felis . . . Felicity . . . you get the idea. But, Felicity also means "happiness," which happened to work out very well with the main theme of Secret of the Songshell, which is about the pursuit of, well, happiness.

- The original working title for Secret of the Songshell was "Minstrel."

That's all for now. Happy New Year!