August Short Story, Naughty Pigs and Garden Life
Aug 07, 2025 11:46 pm
Hey there!
I'll be shifting the format of the email just a little bit. Everything that's been a part of my emails will still be there, but I wanted to give some new things a try for organization sake.
Author Update
The August short story is out! I had a blast writing this story. As per usual, I don't normally know where the plot is going to end up when I start writing it, the ideas just flow until I write 'the end'. It's much more witty and sarcastic that I originally thought it would be, but I think that turned out for the better. Another bonus for this story is that there is an audiobook available for people who, like me, might not always have time to sit down and read. For just a few dollars per month, you can access not only this story, but all the past stories I've published. Also, you'd be helping out this author make progress toward his dream of going full-time some day. *hint hint*
You could also jump up a tier and get access to all early chapters of my works in progress. Chapters 18 and 19 of Dwarf Blooded are now available to read now! (The book is scheduled to release on September 24 for context).
And here's a quick blurb for the story:
"Veribas has mastered time itself, wielding incredible power as the world's sole chronomancer for nearly a thousand years. Now his era is ending, and he has mere days to choose and train his successor--or risk plunging the world into chaos forever.
Terance is barely eleven, distracted, headstrong, and seemingly ill-equipped to handle the immense power of the magic. As Veribas struggles against his doubts and the boy's relentless questions, a shadowy figure known as Chaos sees the opportunity he's waited centuries for: to destroy the chronomancer line once and for all.
With time unraveling and the stakes higher than ever, Veribas must gamble everything on Terance's potential—or watch the world crumble beneath the weight of chaos.
Will an inexperienced boy discover his strength in time, or will he be swept away by powers he can barely comprehend?"
Not to downplay the rest of the positive news that I've reached nearly 82,000 words on Elf Blooded. There are some wild things that go on in this book that I wasn't even prepared for. It feels like the end of this book is right around the corner.
Homestead Update
For the most part, the homestead is just plugging along. Every day I have the pleasure of dragging two cows out to pasture. Most of the time Lucy will come nicely, but Mac, on the other hand, insists on wrestling with me. Normally I would think it could be fun, or a good workout, except this 'child' of a cow weighs nearly 800 pounds more than me. It's my will more than my strength that gets the naughty dude out to eat fresh pasture. I think it's because he doesn't like being stuck in an electric fence. In hindsight, I get it, but also, he's not smart enough to not run into the road and get hit by a car. So he has to deal with it.
The pigs have their own bouts of naughtiness. Turns out that they love milk more than anything in the world, which is good because that's why we got them, so we have somewhere to put the excess of milk. Poor little Baconita (renamed from Squeakie just recently) keeps getting pushed out of the feeder by her much fatter and bigger sisters. Sooooo, I had to build a second feeder. They can technically all fit in one, but she gets pushed out. Here you can see them side by side. (and maybe you can tell, or possibly not, but the pigs are much bigger already)
And last but not least, the garden is flourishing in many ways. We've been harvesting as much fresh food off of it as we can. It's pretty dang cool that my wife goes 'shopping in the garden' right before cooking so we get about the freshest food possible. She and the kids harvested onions and garlic recently, and we've been incredibly blessed with what we got from it.
Free Stories
Other Books to Check Out
warm regards,
Dan
