Hello everyone! It’s been a long time since my last blog, I know, but there’s a very good reason for that: career-wise, absolutely nothing worth talking about  has happened since my last post. My first book, Soulless, is still available on Amazon, book two, Soul Search, is being shopped out for consideration by another publishing company (fingers crossed), and I’m still working on another project that is proving more difficult than I originally imagined–but I’m still plugging away at it. Overall, I’m in a sort of holding pattern, although I am having fun delving into this new story, despite its problems.

When I created this blog last year, I was not shy in expounding just how shy I was in social situations, digital or otherwise. It should have been clear to everyone that I was not going to be someone who could crank out a blog or more a week. In my mind, no one really wanted to hear anything I had to say. At this point in my writing career, I don’t consider myself to be a fount of knowledge and advice for other writers. I struggle with the same writing problems most writers have, and I haven’t solved any great mysteries about the craft, so what’s there really to talk about?

Well, that’s about to change (maybe). A new year is almost upon us and with it comes new adventures. Two, in fact. Both were the brainchildren of my wife, and both require me to leave my comfort zone and attempt to expand my social media presence. *cringes in a corner for several hours and then breathes*

The first is a YouTube/blog site called Geektastic. This started with our son, Logan, who wanted to do his own YouTube review channel like the ones he watches. The goal of this channel is to show our family (Logan, my wife, myself, and my sister, Megan) and all of our Geek interests. We hope to do book, movie, toy, and game reviews, unboxings, and other assorted displays of our Geekness. For my part, I will probably be represented the way criminals are in cop shows, with my face blurred and my voice altered, until I can afford to hire an actor to play me on the channel. I’m still holding out hope for Jared Leto, but I’ll take an unknown if it comes to that. So check us out at  https://geektastic-manzanos.com/ if you’re interested.

The second one, thankfully, does not require me to hire an actor to portray me, but it still requires me to interact with more people than my allotted number of two and a half per day, as dictated the Manzano Code of Avoidance and Social Invisibility (Article 12, subsection 6). It’s called–wait for it–The Inkwell Council!! Okay, so this one is a special little nugget that me and the wife have been kicking around for a while now. One of the things we missed about going to college were the writing workshops. There was something about that environment that always resonated with us. We just loved reading the work of our peers and having our work evaluated by them. We found it both helpful and enjoyable, and it was something that we kept trying to get involved in again. Several attempts to join workshops in the past have ended with mixed or poor results.

So, once again, The Manzanos (me, the wife, and the sister)  rallied together to work on this new venture. The rundown is this, we the Manzanos, want to help other up and coming writers polish their craft, while immersing ourselves deeper into the writing world. We will ask for the first three chapters of a writer’s manuscript, and we three will offer our nonprofessional, but well seasoned, opinions on the work. We will provide our critiques and suggestions for how we feel the writer could improve their work. As stated, we are not professionals, we don’t charge and we don’t guarantee anything but our honest thoughts about their stories. We just want to give a little back to the community, and if we can help to give a writer some pointers that might improve their work and get them a step closer to making their book the best it can be, then we all benefit from it. All the details are listed on the website, http://www.theinkwellcouncil.com/ so be sure to check it out and stay tuned.

Both ventures will begin in January of 2017, and I hope to have some more blogs chronicling their progress in the near future.

We hope to see you soon.