WIP-it Wednesday: November 8th, 2017

Time for a new weekly writer’s roundup of my works-in-progress and those ready to read!

As I mentioned last week, we had a heavy storm hit my neck of the woods where I live in Maine a few days before Halloween, which has now been dubbed posthumously as a ‘bomb cyclone’. We lost a dead tree, had some leaks on our porch, but didn’t experience any major damage or loss of power like many others in our area did. However, we did lose our internet for a few days, which put another delay on getting my new author’s site launched.

It also got me behind on internet-related things in general, and I couldn’t even get started on watching the next season of Stranger Things… ;-)

Not surprisingly, this weekend was a full-court press to make-up for that lost time (and finally watch some new episodes of Stranger Things). It paid off: On Sunday night, and after eight weeks of work, my new Author’s Site of jasonhabbott.com is finally up and live! :-D

I’m extremely pleased with how the site turned out, and my wife Kim went above and beyond creating it! jasonhabbott.com will now serve as a central hub and branching point to my written works and various presences around the internet. In addition to a biography, it also contains a bibliography of my work that functions as a story archive. In time, it will host direct links to where my books are for sale as well.

Getting the site fit to sail entailed a lot of side creations to support it. One of these was finally setting up an author’s mailing list and newsletter of my very own. If you enjoy my work, please consider subscribing to it. Not only will you receive updates and offers conveniently emailed to you, but starting in December or January the monthly newsletter will contain an exclusive and original piece of short fiction from me that members will get to read long before anyone else!

With the launching of the website, I finally had some time to act on plans I’ve had for months to expand my social media presence. I setup an Instagram social media account, which has been recommended to me as an author almost as much as starting the email list. I’ve been thinking about getting on Instagram for a long time, actually, and did some preemptive research about it beforehand. It feels good to have it started now, but I’m still learning it.

As many of you may have noticed due to my Mid-Week Muses and Fifty Word Fantasy features, I enjoy writing microfiction. I discovered my love of it through my presence on Twitter, where my participation in many hashtag writing prompts is now a daily feature of my account there. For a while now I’ve thought about setting up a weekly hashtag prompt of my very own. I’ve seen many authors on Twitter do the same thing as an additional means to network and expand their presence, and I personally love inspiring others to create and write. And in running my prompts on Reddit (from which my Fifty Word Fantasy posts here initially spring), I think I’ve got a good handle on how to run something that’s quite similar in concept on Twitter.

The only problem was that the field is very crowded over there, and all of the hashtags that could relate to anything I’d like to run were taken. However, on the weekend before last I had a thought… and low and behold nobody else on Twitter had acted on it yet! Therefore, on Monday I created:

Clicking the picture above will take you to the account if you’d like to follow it. As it says on the page: “Science Fantasy Saturday — #SciFanSat A weekly Twitter writing prompt focused on science fiction, fantasy, or any spectrum between them.”

I’m really excited to start this up! The debut theme for this Saturday will be “Voyage”.

The launch of my author website has also signaled the end of Aethereal Engines. It was with some sadness and nostalgia that I began turning off the lights and stacking up the tables and chairs of the old place Sunday night. As I said on what will become its last post, AE’s function as a story hub and archive of my work has now been taken over and consolidated into jasonhabbott.com. This leaves it not only without a purpose, but also makes it a possibly confusing snarl on the web for folks seeking my work.

Therefore, I’ve made the bittersweet decision to take it down. All the stores I had there are now in the bibliography-archive on my author’s site, and are in an easier format to navigate and read there as well. I’ll be premiering and blogging new web fiction material mostly here on Aethereal Engineer from now on, under the searchable category of “Fiction” (also on the sidebar).

By the way —and speaking of premieres— in just a few weeks I’ll be starting a five chapter serialization of my superhero / magical girl novelette Cretaceous Queen! One chapter will go up every Saturday until the story concludes in mid-December. Get ready for some serious thrills and cliffhangers! :-)

However, you won’t have to wait two weeks for some new fiction from me! I’ve decided to vary-up Thursdays on the blog, and starting tomorrow I’m adding a new Flash Fiction Feature that will run in place of Throwback Thursdays for a while. I crafted two flash fiction pieces towards this end of about 250 words apiece over the weekend. One will go up tomorrow and the other next Thursday, with more to come after that.

The Throwbacks and their associated essays will return, and in the future on some Thursdays I’ll post a flash fiction story, a throwback essay, or both depending on my whims and the amount of time that I have to do so. But for now, I want to entertain you with some stories. ;-)

Alright, time for me to stop blogging and get back to writing some more fiction! Take care!