http://www.sirthomasriley.com

Enlist as a Sky Pirate

http://www.sirthomasriley.com/recruiting-sky-pirates/

Tags: steampunk, steampunk novel, thomas riley
Current Location: Nashville

Ok, you know this is for late night personal feelings.... sometimes these opinions don't always go along with the posts I make in the day, but I have to tell you. Man, this is hard. If you only knew sometimes. Things are tough. I work, I write, I'm doubted, and often I feel alone. This feeling seems to leech on many things I do no matter what it is... Music, life, love, art, writing.... It's sometimes a tough unforgiving and extreemly lonely job. I feel so alone from time to time. Like everything is all on me. I motivate others, I try my best to be too nice, I encourage, that's my lot in life, but right now I'm feeling pretty damn frustrated.

Seriously, You want to know about my day? I worked until noon, helped my mom move, came home and worked on promo posters for Thomas Riley, then talked to my friends about the sad yet exciting reunion show we're doing. Now... Now I'm here. almost midnight, seven hours away from going to Atlanta for two days and without seeing my wife for more than an hour in what feels like three weeks. I want her to do her best and I want her to succeed more than anything, but wow, I didn't realize that I would be so damn alone.

Current Location: Nashville
Current Music: Rodan

I'm going to take a late moment to vent... why? Because I need it, and I hope you understand.
I'm angry, I'm sad, I'm frustrated.
I've lost a friend and I'm having a hard time dealing with it. I don't mean lost as in we had a spat. (How appropriate if you get the inside ref) Anyway, I'm high strung as it is... This has made me a nut. I feel cheated, lied to, and I want revenge. I want justice. I know a dozen scumbags that deserved this... But not him, not even close.

I sit here uninspired and listing starboard. I'm only hoping that this venom can help cool the anger. No really, I have feelings that I can't even share here without fear of retribution. And as far as I know.... This is nearly completely ignored.

I did take some important lessons away from all of this, but I'm concerned with the pure white knuckled fists that I hold now. No, I wouldn't be that dumb... Not to actually do anything. Oh no, that revenge will come in words, stories, characters that freakishly resemble you... Honestly if your actually astute enough to read this, you'll be infamous.... as the unknowlegeable, ignorant unworthy of air character that I'm going to make you,.. You know who you are and if your offended by it, then you probably have the wrong man... and woman. Yes I;m pointing fingers. While he made his own choices, you, yeah you chose the course to assist MY friend, his mother's son and his brothers' brother correctly in his time of need. We have to know... was it because you were scared? Freaked out man? Or just a half wit as I expect?

Before I engage a street fight with these sub-humans... I'll stop now.
Love, Nick

Because I gotta
I'm writing here becasue I need to. Again, while I really can't complain, I just feel like I need to vent a bit. Honestly, life is pretty awesome. I have a book coming out, I moved into my first house that I now actually own, I just got back from San Diego and I hve trips planned for Atlanta (Dragon Con), and Myrtle Beach (South Carolina Writers Con) in the quickly approaching months. After that, it's one trip after another. Maybe one to Deerborn Michigan, San Fransisco... and another trip to San Deigo in February. 2010 has a butt load of possibilities. So things are good. While they are good, life is also increasingly hectic. Let's face it,  going to San Diego isn't cheap, especially when they have almost all of my favorite artists there. The house is in a constant move, paint, decorate, box and unbox, organize state. And my second rounds of edits are due on August 5th... Yep that's in 7 days. Yikes. Again, I shouldn't be complaining and I'm not. Really I felt like I needed to put a quick note here to expalin my internet absense.

SDCC 09
It ruled, as usual. I saw panels with Ray Bradberry, Lost, Human Target, Mythbusters, The Vampire Diaries (I'm sad to say), and I got to see Amanda Palmer play! I won't go into much more detail than that here as I want to make a HUGE blog about it, but as you can see above, my "free" writing time will be pretty limited for a while.


Soooo
Stay tuned to this and my main blog for all types of info. Everything is coming soon.

Tags: amanda palmer, editing, san diego comic con, sdcc 09, thomas riley
Current Location: Nashville
Current Music: Amanda Palmer

^%$#@^%&$!!!
It appears that in addition to not being able to keep up with anything going on, I can't do anything right. Yeah, everything's a mess and I'll tell ya, I'm pretty damn sick of it. Apparently I've bitten off more than I can chew and there isn't enough hours in the day to get everything done. I'm not using that as a cop out, I'm being quite literal. I need to call Jay Leno and study his brain so I can figure out how the hell he can function on 2 hours of sleep a night. (or whatever it is).

Sorry for the angry post... I just don't want to write it anymore right now.

Nervously content
I've been editing. That's pretty much been it. I sit in front of the computer and change my terrible punctuation and try to make the story flow better with Rochelle's suggestions. (By the way, she's awesome.) My biggest annoyance with the whole thing right now is that it's taking me forever! Really, I am currently on page 115... that isn't enough progress and I spent my entire weekend working on it! On top of that, I feel like I should go back through it once done and give it another run through! It's daunting really.


SDCC
I'm so excited about going to The San Diego Comic Con this year! This is going to be a really good one. Clive Barker, Lost, Amanda Palmer, Mythbusters, Kevin Smith and Miyazaki are going to be there!! Personally for me... it's like they hand picked these guests for me! There is so much goodness in store, I am jumping out of my skin to go. Actually, it's one month from today. Wow! It's always a great time and a time that all my worries go out of the window.


Omy!
I love this song by Mother Mother. Listen to "Hayloft".


The schedule
I have too much to do... You know that. But I am having to make a schedule for my life to get things in order. I literally can't do everything, even for a short time in one day. So now, one day gets one job and the other gets another one. Tonight I think I'm back working on the house. Oh crap!

Tags: mother mother, san diego comic con, thomas riley
Current Location: Nashville
Current Mood: nervous
Current Music: Mother Mother

Here's the state of things:

Editing: It's really not so bad. Actually it's kind of fun. Yeah I must sound creepy there... Anyway, things are laid out for me. Rochelle's suggestions are great and I can already tell that she is going to make the book way better. (And I liked it as is.) So it does take a bit of time, but I'm enjoying the process.

New House: The new place looks pretty damned awesome so far thanks to some friends that have helped us out with it. It too is proving to be a slow process... I hate painting, but it's coming along.

The recap: Beisdes my trip last weekend, life has been me sitting in front of a computer or doing something with the house, or trying to sort out what is to be done next. It seems that our million things to do has turned into ten million. When things get this crazy, I sometimes freeze and waste a lot of time trying to sort out what to do first. Yeah, that's a bad trait of mine.

Blog: If you want a recap of the KC research trip, check out my blog. http://nickvalentino.blogspot.com

Tags: editing, new house, nick valentino, research trip
Current Location: Nashville

Archangel, Dark Angel Lend Me Your Light...Through death's viel, until heaven's in sight.
Can you tell I'm gearing up for the research trip? Well, I am and in my typical fashion, I barely have a thing done. No packing, no lists, no money... Everything has been put off until the last day as usual. I don't mean to, it just seems to happen like that. That said, I have to do everything today, and tonight. Sweet.

Urge Overkill
In true spirit of the trip, and through reseacrh into the city I discovered (I think I already knew this, but I was reminded) that Urge Overkill has an EP called the Stull EP which features a picture of the exact place I'm going... In classic Urge Overkill fashion, I'm not a fan of the faster songs, but I love the slow ones.


So...
That's it. I have massive packing, worrying, and running around to do and not much else to talk about unless you want to hear about the house work I've been doing... Yeah I didn't think you would. Ok, so adios. I'll write when I get back, which will be early next week or so.

Tags: research trip, stull ep, urge overkill
Current Location: Nashville
Current Music: Urge Overkill

Where is my mind?
All over the place! I'm so not kidding. Every night I have been working on the new house. It is absolutely unreal the nasty and foul things you can gte into when buying a house that needs a little work. Toilets, AC, bugs, chemical sprays, acetone cleaners, gutters to be cleaned... This list is endless. I haven't even had time to blog much, which is annoying as hell. Really... I work all day, I run home, change clothes and bust it over to the new place for more work work work. So... I am just going to make it happen until Friday, which I have dubbed "The Day Of Inspiration". This is the day that I fly out to Kansas City for my research trip!

Ole KC
I am rolling out in the morning and much to my surprise, this seemed to come at a crazy time when the house needs tons of work. I'll be honest with you... I really need this break from the house work. I have had my hands in places I never thought they would be in the last few weeks and I am ready to get away from everything, by myself and get inspired to write. There is nothing quite like being loney as hell in a new city with nothing to do but explore weird places and study your surroundings. So, I plan on running around to some "haunted" places (and a bus station) by day and hitting up a few micro-breweries at night where I will sit like a goon and write notes, thoughts and ideas I gathered throughout the day.

Nocturnal Pulse
I am nervously excited about heading to Stull. I know what it is going to be... Nothing. Seriously, I read they have about 20 people that live in the tiny town. So that brings up a little oddness... here is this guy with a backpack strolling through their graveyard that is right next to the highway. Really I would like to spend a few hours there, but I'm a little afraid I'm going to get into trouble since it's on private property. You know what though? Who cares! Yeah that's a statement, not a question. They can arrest me if they like. I'm just there writing. If I go to jail, I'll give you all the fun details. If they shoot me because I'm trespassing... well, that sucks and if you never see me on here again... please feel free to spread their murderous actions all over the internet and bring as much attention to Stull Kansas as you can. (Apparently the residents HATE the attention their demonic graveyard brings)

In other really cool news
Echelon Press assigned me an editor. Rochelle Bailey. I'm super stoked about this!  So things are rolling along nicely. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Thomas Riley has his own myspace page. This will be the precurser to his personal blog, where he will do all of the talking as he does on his myspace page. Oh the fun you can have with social networking. Take a look: www.myspace.com/sirthomasriley

Tags: kansas city, my new house, research trip, steampunk, stull kansas, thomas riley
Current Location: Nashville
Current Music: Cradle Of Filth

Echelon Press Publishing

Ok... This is it. It actually happened today and honestly, I'm kind of shocked. I received a contract for my book, "Thomas Riley" from Echelon Press Publishing. I guess you wait, you work and you struggle with so much for so long that you think sometimes nothing will come of it... Well, it did. So I am going to review the contract and I guess it's on baby! A ton of work comes with me putting my name on those pieces of paper, but holy cow, I am ready for it! So sometimes things do work out in my favor. Not that I didn't believe them when they told me they were interested, but the fact that I really have the papers right here right now... Wow. I am kind of at a loss for words.

To distract myself from having the 235276427 different ideas of marketing and promoting the book, I was going to tell you about my weekend... But I will be frank... I can't think of much else right now. Really... There are so many things to do and plan that I will really be cheating you and myself of any worthy description of the long weekend. So, let's leave it at that today. WOO!

Tags: echelon press publishing llc, thomas riley
Current Mood: excited