Lots of changes to the site recently. Trying to fine tune everything and get it up and running smoothly. Turns out I don't do web design for a reason: lack of patience. It's tedious and often mind-numbing but in the end, things are looking good. More true to the tone of the series and who the characters are.

While working on the second book of the series, The Devil in Sirocco, we've disappeared down a rabbit hole of exploration. We often reference a time we haven't seen; the time before the team got together or even how they got together. Devil explores their first days getting their feet wet as fugitives, but what did they look like before that? Clearly, Aron and I have an idea, but we haven't put it to paper. Recently we've explored a snippet of that time period in their lives. What the characters looked like, what their relationships looked like and I can say this; it's amazing. It clears up current relationships, explains questions we never realized we had. It's beautiful and so far under 30k words. A short story some would say. The first of its kind and not the last.

We often toss out throwaway lines, ideas that would be fun to explore but don't necessitate their own book. This time around we jumped on the opportunity to develop a short to see where it lead. While I can't say things won't change and short stories should not be considered canon to the books, it's been a fun ride and I'm excited to see about getting it cleaned up and start posting it for the public to see.

Quent

Hello all.
  Long time no talk. There's a whole list of reasons for that.  Instead of dragging you guys around through paragraphs of life, work, school, and teenage drama to explain all of it, I thought I could try something new. Ready for this kids? The truth.

Right angry monkey puppet?
*Side note, my kids never, ever should have shown me GIF's. It is a power I use unwisely and abuse for my own amusement.*

      Anyways, back to the post.
      Truth is a tricky. It's something we say we want, but a good part of the time it's messy, painful, and hard. Emery and Chance spend a vast amount of time and resources avoiding the truth for exactly those reasons.
         Lies are pretty. You can filter, photo shop, package them up until they look perfect, and put out only what you want. But like the Facebook ads promising beautiful clothes for one dollar, lies never hold up in the long run and end up being so far away from reality you're left with an unrealistic, unusable, hot mess. (Yeah, I'm looking at you Wish. That great maxi skirt is currently my headband. Extra large? Only in the land of anorexic gnomes, jerks. Hmm.... I may need to work on some on my unresolved shopping and anger issues, but later.)
       Reading Quents' post got me thinking, (bad idea, I know), about flaws and how writing is better when we expose the unfiltered picture. People relate to flaws, maybe even more so than the picture perfect Instagram beauty people try to sell. So maybe I should take a deep breath and jump into the raging, uncharted waters of ..dum..dum..dum.. dadah.. the truth.
         Truth number one:   I've shied away from blogging because there's a big old half ton truck load of insecurity involved. Who the heck am I to have a blog? Who wants to hear from me? Who cares? A sampling of some of the many negative and useless comments that fill the spaces of my head when I open up my PC to do this.
        Blogging isn't the only place it hits me. It can sneak up into everything from getting dressed to applying for a job. Thing is, and what I'm slowly, finally, learning, (yes, ladies and gents she can be taught!) is it's normal and human to feel this way sometimes. Everyone at some point has the same doubt and worry. We are not alone, even though it can feel like we're the only person in Crazy Town, population of 1.
       Self doubt and worry are universal, like hemorrhoids and hair ties, everyone has them. If you can find the strength to push past them, expose them, and maybe even laugh about them, you might find yourself laughing along with a whole bunch of people who are relived to know they have neighbors in Crazy Town. (The good kind of neighbors who dog sit and bring cookies at the holidays. Not the weenies who think 3am is a great time for heavy metal drunk wheel barrel bowling. *Glares*  You KNOW who you are.)
        As Quent pointed out, our stories focus around characters with very relatable, very real problems. It can be fun to watch perfect people, with perfect hair, live in their perfect houses, with perfect families, with  perfect teeth and perfect healthy gums. But it gets real boring, real fast. Almost as boring as reading a sentence with the word perfect written 7 times. Honestly, if people really found perfection enjoyable there would be a hit TV show called The Perfect House Wives of LA. Everyone would get along and put their families first and pay bills on time, and work at getting grass stains out of clothing. 
      Super dull right? So yeah we're not doing that. Quent and I will keep plowing into Wolfgang's world and messing stuff up.
       Why? Because we can. Messy is good, ugly is pretty, because it's real, it's relatable and it give us a place to escape to that we identify with.
        In the mean time we'll try to keep it real with all the peeps out there for the same reasons.
        End of truth 1 and my post for today. Keep it real guys and keep reading.
Love ya!
Aron