Alexander Engel-Hodgkinson's Blog: Way to Stay "In the Know", page 2

Good news, everyone: I've finally got paperbacks going on Lulu! It's been a long time coming, but here they are!

Lulu Spotlight: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/finalap...

In other news, Cobalt Rogue, Vol. 3 will be moving to its final editing phase in approximately a week from now! WOOHOO! Almost there! Expect it December 10th!

Then it's on to completing Vol. 3.5 in time for December 20th! Two releases in one month, woooooo.

I'm excited about this one. It's pretty grim, but I see improvements in my writing since I wrote the first two volumes (technically, Vol. 3.5 may as well be Vol. 4, but it isn't), and I think I've addressed some complaints about the first two without sacrificing my vision in the slightest. Damian Warkowski is coming back next month!

In the meantime, if you haven't read the first two volumes, you can check 'em out in the links below!

Amazon Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Cobalt+Rog...

Kobo E-Books: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/search?que...

Lulu Paperbacks: https://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?k...

Stay tuned...

Good news, everyone! Soon I'll finally have paperback editions of my books live on Lulu! Just working on reformatting the original files so that they are compatible with paperback standards. Once I approve of the proof copies, we're golden! So excited! It's taken me long enough, that's for damn sure.

In other news, I'll be working on Cobalt Rogue, Vol. 3 and 3.5 along with a new horror novella called She Watches Me Bury Her, which will be submitted to an indie publishing house called Cephalopress once it's finished, due closer to Halloween.

Expect the next installments in the Cobalt Rogue/Final Apocalypse Saga this December!

Hey guys!

Cobalt Rogue, Vol. 3's production is still going smoothly; getting several pages done throughout each week.

That being said, I'm also not making this much more than a hobby, as I don't make much off of what I create and publish.

So I figured I'd broaden my horizons a bit. Recently I stumbled upon a new indie publishing house based in the UK that's just starting out and currently taking submissions from all over the world. It's hard to find publishers that look like they're worth the time or even legit, but these guys, Cephalopress, look like they might fit the bill as competent and legitimate.

So fingers crossed.

I decided to test their waters with a short story, and what better genre to write that short story in than the horror genre? Since my horror stories seem to get the most reactions out of people (good... AND bad). So my relationship with these guys will depend entirely on how they react to this story.

What IS the story? Well, I'm gonna keep the details under wraps for now until I've got more of it done (currently six pages into what I plan will be twenty pages, no more than twenty-five). But what I WILL reveal right now is the title: "She Watches Me Bury Her." The story itself will probably be about as disturbing as the title itself, if not more.

Anyway, this shouldn't be too much of a distraction from Cobalt Rogue. I intend to finish that this year, because three years to work on a book is already insane.

Stay tuned!

Sorry for the radio silence, guys. A lot has happened. I got a new computer on the very same day that my old one got caught in the crossfire of a man-made hurricane provided by Selection spring water. Unfortunately, I could neither prevent the disaster nor save that laptop from the consequences, and its internal memory and storage died a few hours later.

Luckily I had everything saved on an external TB drive already, or I would have been fucked--set back a good four months, which is about how long it's been since the last time I emailed updates of my written documents to myself and additionally saved them to my One Drive.

Anyway, I'm not sure when I'll actually have 'Cobalt Rogue, Vol. 3 and 3.5' done, but I am approaching the finish line. I want it to be as perfect as can be, so it's taking a while. Please bear with me.

Stay tuned...

Hey all. Been busy, but thought I'd thrown in an update since I haven't written one since May.

Hard at work on Cobalt Rogue I've gotten quite a bit done. Just working on the finale. I'm estimating another fifty pages or so before the editing phase. Lots going on! Excited to publish it once it's finished, but I've had a bad habit of publishing things prematurely. Gonna be more careful from now on.

Screwed up my laptop this morning. Apparently I wrongfully assumed a perfectly good Starbucks Cappuccino bottle would be able to store other liquids. I was wrong, because it immediately leaked Coca-Cola onto my laptop and it seeped under the closed screen, where it rested for just over five hours and rendered half the keyboard inoperable. In an unusual stroke of luck, the rest of my laptop survived, so I wasn't stuck with backup files that were nearly a year out of date. Suffice to say, I bought a new keyboard from the pawn shop and backed up all vital documents and artwork onto a flash drive I had lying around. WAY TOO CLOSE!!!!

Hey, guys! It's been an interesting couple of weeks for me. Got fired from the motel I've been stranded in for twenty months (and thank Christ for that because I HATED it there!) and went out with some good friends of mine to see Avengers: Infinity War that same day (pretty awesome despite its flaws). Now I'm staying at a friend's house helping her babysit while she works nights due to an unfortunate incident, so I guess I couldn't have picked a better time to be unemployed! I was going to quit a month before my termination anyway, with plenty of savings stowed away, so I'm good. My only regret is that I didn't get the chance to slap a printed poster of Steve McQueen's The Great Escape on the desk on my last day! Oh well.

Gives me plenty of time to work on my books again! Got lots of projects slated for the next couple of years, and while I'm at it, I can work at getting some paperbacks going and reach out to more platforms! Cobalt Rogue, Vol. 3/3.5 will be the first releases I'll make since Cobalt Christmas, and I'm still aiming for a summertime release this year if it can be helped. I've been working on them on and off for three years now; it's about time I got it all together. Then it's on to Jumping for Charlotte, which has just over sixty pages completed--moved to a Valentine's 2K19 release, because my sense of humour is shitty enough to provoke me to release such a tragic romance story on that day.

Then I have a ton of other shorter projects I'd like to complete before I move on to Cobalt Rogue, Vol. 4/4.5. From 3.5 on I'd like to get a bi-annual release schedule going for this series, seeing as how it could already take me up to a decade to complete the whole series.. Yeah. Insane, right? It's already been eight years since I started working on the prototype series (which is horrendous and will never be seen by public eyes), but now that the groundwork is laid down, I've just got to write the damn thing.

Shorter projects have already been added to my Goodreads bibliography, queued for release within the next year. Charlotte, and then The Laughter in the Woods. After that, who knows which out of the two-dozen side projects I'll take off the shelf next?

Been drawing a bit more, watching movies, keeping myself distracted, and revisiting my two current Cobalt Rogue projects and Jumping for Charlotte.

Got a nice story, though: so I'm a member of a group of indie authors who gather at the local library to share each other's stories and offer advice, constructive criticism, and just an all-around friendly environment. Two people are usually chosen to send out their submissions a week before the meeting. I haven't been attending often for a number of reasons, none of which are because of any negative feelings toward the group or any one member; I genuinely like the group and the people I talk to there, but whenever it becomes my turn to submit, I don't want to shaft someone else with that responsibility, so I always send something.

Naturally, since my attendance is shit, that means I haven't given much criticism of my own except in the odd time I'm actually motivated to go when it's NOT my turn to submit. I feel bad when I show up to hear my own criticisms despite feeling unmotivated otherwise. I feel like a selfish ass. Just about all of my submissions have received unanimous praise, with only a few detractors here and there, but such is the world of criticism, right? All's fair and these guys are genuinely supportive. My latest submission also received acclaim from them, and one guy in particular told me, "You know, I'm kinda frustrated. I know it's difficult maintaining attendance and stuff. I know I don't show up to every meeting, none of us have 100%. But when I got your story, I was pissed. I thought 'This guy never criticizes my work; I'm gonna hate this so much.' I was determined to hate it. I'm not even a full page in and I'm already loving it. So I owe you my thanks. You changed my mood for the better that day, and you proved me wrong with this amazing story."
So I uh... didn't quite know what to say to that. I was glad he liked it, which I thanked him for, and I felt bad that my feedback in return was lacking, for which I apologized profusely to not only him but the rest of the attendees that day. I didn't think my work had that much power, especially one about a guy trying to escape an army of coworkers trying to sacrifice him to their satanic Y2K god, but this one changed the man's whole day. I'm amazed and pleasantly surprised by that. It sure brought me up for a while...

Anyway, I think I've decided to keep all Final Apocalypse Saga installment releases within the month of August from here on out. Hopefully I'll have Vol. 3 and 3.5 done by then. It's been over three years since I first published Vol. 1, then under the Dark-Boy title before I changed it... I really ought to get the ball rolling again.

Not sure when I'll have Jumping for Charlotte done. All publication dates for this are subject to change until further notice, as I've only really found the time for this (sometimes) while I'm working behind the desk at this motel on quiet nights. Might aim for Valentine's Day next year, might not. One thing's for certain--I intend to have all projects you see on here with 'intended release dates' done before I start anything else long-term. So after these three projects are completed, I'm making The Laughter in the Woods my top priority.

Stay tuned...

Alright, so I've been taking a bit of a break from writing and stuff to try and focus on other things due to some extremely unfortunate curveballs that have thrown my personal life waayyy off the rails... hard to focus on much these days. I apologize for the lack of output.

Still, despite my lack of focus and stuff, my imagination keeps on going. Not always into places I'd like to be right now but places nonetheless.

For starters, I must've thought up two completely original Cobalt Rogue stories with nothing but the most basic outlines for a plot and working titles only.

One being Cobalt Rogue High, a reimagined love letter to the eighties in an alternate universe in which the core cast of the series start off as private high school stereotypes slash dangerous psychopaths with superpowers. They find entangled in a conspiracy involving a new drug on the streets that turns people into monsters, while an illusionist stalks the dorms searching for new victims. It's gone into some pretty dark places but it's also kind of funny, from what I've imagined, anyway...

The other is Cobalt Rogue: The Abortion Initiative, where an adult Damian Warkowski is drawn to a private institution where they've secretly been using his stolen DNA to create clones of him for a wide variety of purposes. Also dark. And depressing.

Jesus, when I'm in a bad spot I think of some really screwed up shit.

Anyway, I've been trying to pick at Jumping for Charlotte and Cobalt Rogue Vols 3 and 3.5, but it ain't always easy these days...

Please bear with me as I try to recover.

Stay tuned.

Working on two separate projects at a steady pace. Since Cobalt Rogue is too long to work on in an email attachment at work (just finding the spot I was working on at home in the document is a big pain), I've been chipping away at Jumping for Charlotte on the work computer (without downloading it onto the actual computer, because that's dumb). At home, I've got over 450 pages of material for Vol. 3 and 3.5, so I'm working that out between midnight shifts and other essential duties of the working young man. Fun, fun.

Hope to have both of these completed by mid-2018, but as we all know, complications often arise...

Stay tuned!

...Or has been, for a couple days now... I just forgot to announce it here on the day I published it. Plus, sleep.

Anyway, it's a month late, but that's how much time I needed to get it done and satisfactory. No more going back to revise it with further edits after rushing to get it out there like I have in the past. I'm satisfied with the finished product.

Check it out here:
https://www.amazon.com/Cobalt-Christm...