Progress on Strange Fangs and a List of Awesome Things I Did in Texas

Yesterday, I finished editing the first chapter of my vampire novel, here named Strange Fangs, and resubmitted the cover, which was redone by my good friend Nate Sherwin, so it looks a lot closer to professional than it did. Now we wait on Jukepop Serials to OK it for publication. Then we'll see where this goes.


Also, further notes on my Texas trip follow.

• I spent one day on the campus of my alma mater, TCU, seeing my favorite professors and chatting at them despite awful jet-lag. 
• The next day, there was a party that I was abhorrently late to, but hopefully my friends will forgive me. 
• The day after that was a massive trip to the Fort Worth Zoo, which was spectacular despite the weather. I should have planned better for time so that my father and my friend's four year old son would not have been soexhausted by the time we could finally leave. That night, I had the privileged of seeing Fort Worth's Stage West Theater's production of Avenue Q which was amazing and hysterical.
• The day after that was Sunday, which held the Super Bowl and a huge ice storm, so my parents and I grabbed supplies from a nearby grocery store and stayed inside all evening, enjoying barbecue and a warm fire. We were not so much enjoying the game, as it was a blow out and not at the hands of the Dallas Cowboys. I guess any game that started off with a safety within the first few plays can't end in too much of a surprise.
• Then came Monday, which held a trip to the stockyards for one of my dearest friends, Courtney Goode, and me. We wound up having amazing beer and ground sirloin nachos at the White Elephant. When I bought a t-shirt afterward, the awesome barman became the first person to sell me a t-shirt while suggesting a larger size and not offending me. Since the only other place that has happened is Tokyo, I suppose this isn't too surprising, but for me it was wonderful.
• Tuesday was our family outing to the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, where we wound up with free tickets to the rodeo, which we enjoyed immensely. 
• Wednesday ended with me having a large family dinner with the Ceron family, which was terribly enjoyable.

Thursday, I left Texas on a severely delayed plane, and the rest was explained in a previous post.

Now, some of these things were perfectly planned and some were not. As I travel, I tend to dwell on the plans in play to make sure that I don't waste all of my time at my destination. That said, with this trip in particular, I found that having some time off with nothing in particular planned really benefited me. Saturday, for instance, I had lunch at Jason's Deli with three of my very best friends. This was planned all of maybe an hour before it occurred, but it was necessary and awesome all the same.

So it is of key importance, I have found, to allow some down time during any vacation or indeed ever to simply be and breathe in your surroundings. The most interesting adventures we have are often those we did not count on having.

Now, I need to engage in present distribution and the general reorganization of things.

Thanks so much for reading.