It has been a long time since I gave any updates on my work. There are a few reasons/excuses for that. First, I am back in my MBA program and busy working on getting my degree. Second, I have been spending an absorbent amount of time outlining and preparing the fourth manuscript: BlackBox Enterprises (this is a working title as all of my manuscripts are). I am starting BlackBox Enterprises on Friday.
Short stories continue to flow and get submitted to magazines. I am hoping, in about two months, I will be able to share these with all of you. So far, I have only heard back from two source (one was a competition and the other a magazine). I am hoping more responses from magazines will come through (rejection or acceptance, either works) so I can begin my website redesign. I also reached out to an author to see if he would mind mentoring me. Hopefully a professional will be able to show me the faults others have missed, and in doing so, help me tighten up my work.
Also, there are currently attacks against my web host. These attacks are called DDOS, distributed denial of service, and have made my website go down multiple times throughout the week. For reference, these attacks are not hacking attempts. The goal of the person perpetrating them is to deny service to my host’s web services. This means, they are just taking a ton of computers and asking the servers frivolous questions in order to lock them up. Do not worry, these attacks can last five minutes or months. My host has already dealt with the bulk of the attack but there are some residual effects.
Before I bounce back to outlining, I want to mention that the new site redesign it going well. I am modifying the menu so it is easier for mobile users. There will be a new landing site for the short stories, a page for my old work, and a flash fiction page. This will make it easier to navigate. What this will do is simple, it will make the site more accessible by categorizing the bulk of my work. Furthermore, the menu will shrink from offering all the short stories to only offering the three pages. All of these modifications are happening because I produced too much work for the current layout. I will be using an under construction sign when I decide to make these modifications.