It’s been a long time since I’ve posted an entry, so I thought I’d take the time to explain why. Sometime last September, my best friend of twelve years came to me and said he had cancer. He was scheduled for chemotherapy and wanted to live with us while he recuperated. He also thought it might help to start playing World of Warcraft again, to help lift his spirits. So I put aside the revision of book two, which was half-way completed, and agreed.

What I didn’t know at the time was that he had stage IV renal carcinoma. Despite all treatment, which had very little chance of success, he kept a positive attitude and was convinced he could beat the cancer. He lived with me and my family for a while, then in hospice and home care with his mother. He passed away February 7^th, with his family in California.

His name was Kasim Amyx, though he had a number of online aliases all his friends knew him by. For most of the time that followed his passing, I didn’t feel like writing or doing anything more than play video games. It’s easy to get lost in a game. I still walk by the room he stayed in sometimes and expect to see him on the bed. I miss him a lot and find it hard to believe that he’s gone.

It’s time to get back to writing, though. I recently quit my job with University of Phoenix and start next month as Lead Writer for the video game Kaos War. I expected to work on finishing the revision with the time in between, but a project came up that requires my full attention. I’d mention more, but you know how those pesky non-disclosure agreements are.

I’ll try to be more active in updating my site. I recently tried to update the version of Wordpress I use and lost all my posts. Luckily I had a backup. Of course, when I replaced all the old files, the posts still weren’t showing. Somehow, all the categories had been erased. I had to recreate them and manually assign a category to every post for the past two years. That was fun. Needless to say, I may just leave the site as it is.

I’m hoping to have time soon to finish the revision. The new cover is incredible, as Henning’s work always is. I looked forward to having it all done, just to get everyone to stop asking me when they can read it! I’m glad so many people enjoyed the first book, though. I can tell the time and effort I put into rewriting it was worthwhile.